ACHRC: What price the humanities?

‘You can’t put a price on human life’ is a truism that has been countered by economists, politicians and policy makers who do precisely set that price, for many social and economic purposes. What if we asked the same question of the humanities? What are the costs and benefits of the humanities? What kind of price, what kind of value, should we set on the intellectual and cultural constellation of humanistic research and scholarship, and how might we begin doing so? And why carry out such an instrumental and perhaps absurd exercise? Professor Mark Ledbury will argue that ‘running the numbers’, is both an effective and a necessary method to demonstrate why all societies should prize and preserve the humanities research and education.