As part of our re-launch of the Palgrave Macmillan Campaign for the Humanities on Research Communities, I’m delighted to announce that we now have a dedicated space within the Research Seminars by Springer Nature for video content relating to the Campaign, which you’ll find within Springer Nature's Humanities Collection .
We’ve kicked off this new Seminar series by showcasing selected video content from our participation in the Being Human festival over the last few years. Being Human is the UK’s national festival of the humanities, which aims to demonstrate the value and relevance of humanities research to society in the UK and globally and encourages opportunities for researchers to share their ideas and discoveries with non-specialist audiences. It is led by the School of Advanced Study at the University of London and works in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy to support humanities public engagement across the UK.
As part of Being Human, we’ve had some fantastic public-facing discussions on a huge variety of topics over the years and feel it’s only right that these should remain publicly available (particularly in the spirit of our shared goal of promoting the value, impact and relevance of the humanities in academia and beyond). We were first involved in the festival in 2016 and have participated regularly ever since, taking the festival topic (which is often rather abstract!) in exciting new directions, whilst at the same time, showcasing some of our fantastic authors, series editors and books.
Our first foray into hosting an event the at the Being Human festival was in 2016 where we hosted a panel discussion in our central London events space on Growing Old Gracefully: Hope, Fear and Ageing which tied into the festival theme ‘Hope and Fear’. Chaired by Raymond Tallis, and bringing together leading thinkers including Deborah Jermyn, Elizabeth Peel, Paul Higgs, and Geoffrey Scarre, the discussion focussed on the cultural, philosophical, and psychological dimensions of ageing. Through celebrity culture, social attitudes, lived experience and ethical debate, the speakers explored how it feels to grow old today and what our treatment and representation of older people reveals about contemporary society’s attempts to defy ageing. Being entirely in-person, unfortunately we don’t have a recording, so you’ll have to take my word for how great it was 😊
In 2017 our contribution was Voices Lost and Found: Marking 50 Years since the Decriminalisation of Homosexuality which investigated how gay, lesbian and queer voices have been represented across history, literature and media. Our speakers traced the experience of being marginalised, silenced and criminalised, reflecting on how far these once‑‘lost’ voices have been recovered in the wake of a landmark Act of Parliament. Chaired by historian Sean Brady, the discussion brought together Jane Traies, Helen Smith and Amber Regis to offer rich historical and literary perspectives on visibility, memory and change.
2018 brought us ‘Humans Designing Humans’ which explored what it means to be human in an age of “designed” humanity, combining insights from science, literature, philosophy, ethics and history. Focusing on human origins, reproduction and endings (cunningly linking it to the festival theme ‘Origins and Endings’), it examined the ethical implications of shaping future lives and encouraged critical debate about human agency and responsibility in these processes. We boldly included one video essay in an otherwise ‘live’ event – which made a recording of the entire event very difficult (it was a few years ago!) - but you can find two of the speakers, Markus Turda and Simon Reader, saying a little about their contributions here.
Taking the theme of ‘Discoveries and Secrets’ in 2019, we produced a more juicy panel entitled ‘Exposed!: Scandal and Shame Reconsidered’, which comprised key figures from journalism, history, media studies and art history—including David Leigh, David Nash, William Merrin and Penelope Jackson and was chaired by Suzanne Franks —to examine how notions of scandal and shame have evolved over time. Through topics ranging from troll politics and shoplifting to women art criminals and the role of exposure journalism, the discussion delved into what societies past and present choose to condemn, tolerate or reveal. Here we experimented with livestreaming the event on Facebook, which unfortunately means this is also missing from our back-catalogue, but it was fantastic!
In the midst of Covid lockdown our contribution to the 2020 festival – aptly themed around the idea of ‘New Worlds’ - was entirely online and featured our authors Anthony B. Pinn, Francesca Sobande, Bruce Mutsvairo and Zoe Hope Bulaitis who examined how ethical futures might be shaped in the wake of the pandemic and movements such as Black Lives Matter. Discussions focused on digital harm, racialised and gendered inequalities online and globally, and the limits of profit‑ and data‑driven systems. Emphasising the role of the humanities and Black humanism, the event called for people‑centred, ethically grounded approaches to building more just and equitable futures.
Even with the world opening up a little, we decided to stick with the online format for our 2021 contribution, where the theme of ‘Renewal’ lead us to a delightful panel on ‘The Future of Storytelling’. In this, authors Kate Pullinger, Jason Steinhauer, Bronwen Thomas and Shafquat Towheed, delved into the future of reading and storytelling in a rapidly digitising, visually oriented world. The discussion examined how digital technologies are reshaping how texts are read, experienced and produced, while underscoring the continuing resilience of the book and the vital role of humanities research in understanding our cultural past, present and future.
In the throes of excitement about the prospect of being able to do in person events again, sadly we don’t have a recording of our 2022 event - ‘Women’s Reproductive Health Crisis: Breakthroughs & Backtracks’. Prompted by the global repercussions of the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, this lively discussion reflected on women’s reproductive health across past, present and future contexts. Chaired by Emma Rees and featuring Violetta Hionidou, Lindsay Balfour and Thomas Leitch, it examined the devastating implications for women, as well as trans and non-binary people, and explored both the significant advances and alarming reversals that continue to shape reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, topics that are even more prevalent today.
Our most recent contribution to the Being Human festival was in 2023 and had the title ‘The Future in and of Humanities: Rhyme meets Reason’ (the subtitle being the festival theme) and looked at how the humanities can help us understand and respond to future challenges. Chaired by Christopher Hamilton, speakers Katy Shaw, Nolen Gertz, Margaret Topping and Max Saunders examined topics including digital storytelling and AI, technology and nihilism, literary visions of the future, and the vital role of humanities research in addressing global uncertainty and change. It is perhaps pertinent that this felt like a concluding contribution to the festival for Palgrave Macmillan – for the moment at least – but we very much hope to be back there again soon.
I hope this has given a flavour of how we have championed humanities research and its value within society to the wider public over the last few years. We have several events currently in development for this new webinar series, but if you have an idea for a panel discussion or video that could tie into the overarching themes of the Palgrave Macmillan Campaign for the Humanities, we’d love to hear from you so please drop me an email on f.plester@palgrave.com.