“Social sciences and humanities unveil weaknesses of our societies and allow us to address them”
Dr Gabi Lombardo is the Director of the European Alliance for Social Sciences and Humanities (EASSH), an advocacy and science policy organisation for social sciences and humanities (SSH) in Europe. She is an expert in both higher education and global research policy and has extensive high-level experience operating at the interface of strategy, science policy, research support and funding.
Why are social sciences and humanities (SSH) needed to tackle grand societal challenges and to secure Europe’s competitiveness?
Gabi Lombardo: It can be frustrating trying to justify the importance of SSH. The problem is that SSH have always been seen as an add on, while they deliver important data and knowledge just like any other scientific discipline. SSH experts do critical research and deliver important data that feeds policy. SSH data is crucial for family policies or childcare policies, for example. SSH unveil weaknesses of our societies and allow us to address them. We need SSH data and knowledge for societies to evolve and progress, especially as we aim to make a stronger and more competitive Europe.
How can SSH become better integrated into European research and innovation (R&I)?
Gabi Lombardo: I don’t necessarily want to talk about integration, because the concept of integration is wrong. Scientific disciplines will never fully merge. Let’s not talk about integration. Let’s talk about the importance of each other’s contributions in each other’s research. However, when we look at ‘integration’, we see that it works perfectly well from the SSH side but not from the STEM side. SSH researchers always take the changing environment and technology into account, but the other side doesn’t do the same. It is STEM that misses out on SSH contributions. It’s not an SSH problem, we do everything we can.
What do we need? We need space, capacity and funding. We do good research. The top SSH publications in the world are by European researchers. European SSH research is doing the best it possibly can, but it is the science policy that doesn’t always want to listen to this story.
What are your main thoughts on the current policies for the integration of SSH in EU-funded R&I projects?
Gabi Lombardo: SSH have proven their value, but there is a fundamental issue based on how science policy was historically organised. It is hard to change a system that has existed for over sixty years, but it is slowly changing. For example, some Member States are dedicating special budget to the study of democracy because technology and social media have completely changed how we communicate and how we do politics in the first place.
Could you comment on the main findings of the “Integration of Social Sciences and Humanities in Horizon Europe” report, which shows that 40% of topics under Pillar II were “SSH-flagged”, meaning SSH input was considered essential?
Gabi Lombardo: The European Alliance for Social Sciences and Humanities (EASSH) has done a counter analysis of the report. While the report shows that SSH are essential for 40% of Horizon Europe projects, we saw that even in interdisciplinary projects, the contribution from SSH research remains confined to small parts of projects. Researchers, even when working in multidisciplinary projects, tend to publish in single-discipline journals in their own field. After analysing articles derived from Horizon Europe funded projects, we saw there had been very little progress when it comes to SSH integration.
How can we ensure that SSH are incorporated into the design of key EU initiatives and policies?
Gabi Lombardo: We need to fundamentally change science policy design. Science policy is still based on the same principles as sixty years ago. Since then, technology has been seen as this magical solution that will resolve all our future problems, but our social model today has evolved in a world that has moved away from this vision, causing big tensions. We need data, analysis and research to strengthen our European model. For that, we need financial, political and logistical support in research both at Member States’ and European levels.
In the current European science policy, we only have this very narrow policy window titled “Society”, which is very underfunded for the issues it aims to tackle. And when it comes to the future Competitiveness Fund, there seems to be no entry point for what society needs. Societal needs are not being addressed. We need science policy to be more open and aware of the intertwined connections and the importance of social research.
For example, when the IPCC [The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] researchers first started putting together their reports, they only based them on hard science. However, they quickly realized that they can’t explain climate change only based on hard science. They need to understand social geography and social behavior as well. Both components need to work together, otherwise you always only have one part of the story.