The Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes (CHCI), on behalf of the International Council of Philosophy and the Human Sciences (CIPSH) and in collaboration with UNESCO, and supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, is undertaking a World Humanities Report (WHR).
The WHR, one outcome of the 2017 World Humanities Conference in Liège, is designed to increase understanding of and reflection on the contributions of the humanities to knowledge and society across the globe. The report will show where and how the humanities are practiced and make recommendations for the humanities in the 21st Century, with a medium-term concentration on the next five-to-ten years. Focusing on core humanities disciplines, including philosophy, literature and languages, critical theory, aesthetics and art history, cultural studies, history, and musicology, as well as new areas of inquiry, including the digital, environmental, and medical humanities, the report will document in a clear and multidimensional way the risks we take by not prioritizing the humanities and establish the value of the humanities for human understanding and flourishing.
The project is global in its scope, with research teams located on at least five continents. European team, under the leadership of University of Gottingen and whose partner is Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory, will investigate and research the relation between democracy and humanities through local examples that have a global significance. The Institute for Philosophy and Social Theory will offer an analysis of examples of social movements (Women in Black), informal institutions (Center for Cultural Decontamination) and academic books (serbo-albanian relations in a book Figuring out the Enemy).