Impact and the Humanities: The Rise of Accountability in Public Cultural Life

Abstract

This chapter scrutinises the rise of the impact criterion within research assessment and places it within a wider context of market-led cultural policy (1980–90s). Specifically, the chapter addresses the impact agenda of the 2014 REF by drawing upon a wider context of accountability in public museums. The discussion of the public museum demonstrates how, since the nineteenth century, cultural values are configured within a framework of national interests and regulated through mechanisms of accountability and assessment of public impact. The chapter draws from critical scholarship in the field of museology in order to provide a language with which humanities scholars can address the contemporary changes facing research assessment culture in higher education.