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SERD must rebuild bridges into the humanities for future prosperity

Australian Academy of the Humanities 2025-04-15

If Australia is to develop an innovation economy which involves full development of breakthrough technologies and effective responses to current and future challenges, the SERD must make recommendations that will build bridges into the humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS).

The Australian Academy of the Humanities welcomes the bold ambition of the SERD Discussion Paper. See our submission — available to download here.

Australia is economically complex — our approach to R&D should be the same

“The federal government has made it clear that a strong R&D system is essential for Australia’s economically and socially prosperous future — from harnessing artificial intelligence, to developing new medical breakthroughs and trust in research. Our submission demonstrates that the humanities are integral to this shared future,” said Professor Stephen Garton AM FAHA FASSA FRSN, President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

“There is a significant opportunity cost if our R&D framework fails to give value to the innovation that Australian researchers and professionals can lead through government, in public-private partnerships, and in a new level of engagement with business and industry. We need ongoing, foundational innovation that keeps providing to industry an educated, skilled, healthy, and stable workforce; that develops the role of law, courts, trade agreements and regulatory systems in shaping the context within which new products may be introduced. Current measures of economic complexity don’t include any of these things, or the growing care sector, or services generally,” continued Professor Garton.

For a dynamic, robust and evolving R&D landscape, the Australian Academy of the Humanities recommends these actions:

  1. Gear R&D for foundational innovation: apply expertise so that governments, public-private partnerships, and professions reform and build the institutions that keep Australia strong.
  2. Leverage the leading role that services play in innovation: in Australia, Professional, Scientific and Technical Services (PSTS) is the growth sector for business investment in R&D.
  3. Audit existing government-funded programs which aim to stimulate industry uptake of research, with an eye on gaps and missed opportunities. Do Industry Transformation Hubs and Industry Fellowships (for example) stimulate BERD? Does the current suite of programs draw on the full breadth of disciplinary expertise to connect with markets?  Is there a solid rationale for excluding HASS from the R&D Tax Incentive?
  4. Back Indigenous leadership in returning Indigenous knowledge to communities, and back HASS research that supports Indigenous knowledge holders to move up the value chain.
  5. Better coordinate and demarcate R&D programs across Government agencies, so that specialised agencies such as the Australian Research Council (ARC) play their autonomous part in a national system.  There is no ‘R&D’ without ‘research’ and the ARC plays a pivotal role as funder of early-stage research in the system.
  6. Build research infrastructure and R&D collaboration to promote human agency as well as efficiency in using AI and automated decision making.

Case studies: the impact of humanities R&D

The AAH submission includes case studies that illustrate latent and emerging potential as well as impact of humanities R&D within the services sector, and industrial context. In summary they are: 

The UK experience has been that proactive R&D policy for creative services increases business expenditure on R&D (BERD).

We need to understand our region so that we can find our way in it. Australia’s historic strength in Indonesia knowledge provides a basis for stronger positioning in the Southeast Asian region.

The exhibition Songlines: Tracking the Seven Sisters is an Indigenous Knowledge R&D success.  It is currently touring Europe (so far, the UK, Germany, France and Finland), and is being showcased by global peak museum body, The Best in Heritage.

Brain-computer interface (BCI) technology is already being trialled in humans to relieve sufferers of quadriplegia and epilepsy.

Arguably, trust and signalling on expertise are as important for the knowledge economy as the road, sea and air rules are for the physical economy. Attitudes towards expertise and trust in science will set the confident knowledge economies apart.

Read our full submission.

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