ReseaRch Quality assuRance foR the futuRe a ... - Lund University

Panel 3 – arts
about foreign cultures and their social as well as historical background.
Although interaction with national history and culture is an important
task for the academic world, regional, European and wider international
horizons should characterize research in the humanities.
The role and impact of studies in culture in the broader sense, including
popular culture and media, is less evident than the role of many other
fields of research, yet these fields are increasingly integrated in considerations
of questions that usually are taken as belonging to the fields
of the social sciences. Cross-faculty research that integrates aspects of
social sciences and the humanities will in the future become still more
important. Area-studies are one version of such interactions. Although
there are reasons to focus on departments as organizational structures of
research it is equally important to support cross departmental and cross
faculty structures of research.
Universities are central agencies for knowledge about the social and cultural
conditions of the world, we live in. Research that is developed in interaction
with the best international research communities is an essential
resource for education, for mediatized information, as well as for political
and administrative agencies. Bringing together on one hand historical
knowledge and insight in cultural formations on the international scene
and on the other hand knowledge about social, economic and political
conditions is a task that demands types of intellectual interaction and
organizational structures that go beyond the present organization of the
university.
The combination of direct access to foreign areas based on language
skills, insight in historical backgrounds and intimate familiarity with
foreign cultures, i.e. the combination that is distinctive of research in the
Humanities at its best, is a unique resource in itself, yet it should also be
set in play in other fields.
2. Department of Archaeology
and Ancient History
2.1 Overall assessment
Department of Archaeology and Ancient History is a strong research
environment, which has four disciplines: Archaeology, Classical
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