Blurring Genres Network: Recovering the Humanities for Political Science and Area Studies

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This project will put in place a new network of scholars and policy-makers who will explore innovations in theory and practice that recover the research methods of the Arts and Humanities and encourage their use by Political Scientists, Area Studies scholars and policy-makers in the UK and beyond. The network will investigate examples of blurring genres, or crossing boundaries, between the disciplines in pursuit of insight into making and remaking theory, policy and practice in modern government. It will consider the practicalities of government policy-making in the United Kingdom, and beyond, seeking to apply the insights in, for example, narrative policy analysis. The network will bring together international scholars working on interpretive approaches to Political Science, with experts on Area Studies, to investigate what added value interdisciplinary research teams can bring to traditional research approaches when exploring modern governance. Particularly significant will be the study of the use of narratives and meta-narratives (narratives about narratives) for Historians, Political Scientists, Sociologists, Anthropologists and Philosophers, as well as for policy-makers. The network together will contemplate the kind of stories created, evolved and recounted in the implementation of everyday policy-making in the practice of modern government. The aim of the project will be to recover methodologies from the Arts and Humanities for the use of Political Scientists and interdisciplinary Area (or country) Studies specialists. Furthermore, the Blurring Genres Network will encourage sharing of best practice necessary to inform future policy-making and innovative scholarly work; for example, by developing narrative policy analysis. The new network will encourage interdisciplinary research between scholars in the United States, the UK, China, Australia, Canada, Brazil and elsewhere with an international and comparative approach involving policy-makers. The Blurring Genres Network will organize a research field that, to date, has been unstructured, lacking regional conferences, publications or directly relevant professional associations. It will assist scholars in the United Kingdom to lead the world in this emerging field of international and interdisciplinary research. It will bring together a number of learned societies (UK Council of Area Studies Associations, Political Studies Association UK and the Western Political Science Association USA) internationally with senior UK policy-makers which have not worked together before so creating a new, unique and practical network.