Thinking about Innovation and the Humanities - Part 1
As part of my work on the Monastic Ireland project at UCD, I've had the chance to engage with a number of innovation supports for students, postgrads and postdocs at the university, and the whole area of innovation and the humanities is something that interests me very much - I'm going to write a series of blog posts about my experiences in this area. The picture above is of NovaUCD, the home of the Innovation Centre at UCD - I've found it to be a very supportive and engaging space, and very welcoming and proactive about new ideas.
The things that I want to write about in this series include
The Innovation Academy at UCD
The Commercialisation Bootcamp run by NovaUCD
Innovation and the Humanities Seminar, 14 December 2012
Setting up a campus company with NovaUCD
Putting together a project which looks at supporting creative career pathways for humanities graduates in universities
Working with Fáilte Ireland and what partnering with industry has meant for my research project.
Challenges and opportunities around this area in the humanities, including negative perceptions on both sides!
(Above - Commercialisation bootcamp in action today at NovaUCD)
One of the interesting things about the whole area of innovation and the humanities is the problem of language - what is innovation? What are the humanities? Does it make sense to think of them as one entity? Surely innovation has always been at the heart of research in humanities subjects? Does 'innovation' as part of the 'innovation agenda' only mean commercialisation? Why does negativity exist around this in the humanities? In my experience, there is a negative perception around the idea of commercialisation in the humanities, and that is, in a way, understandable, as it does seem to clash with core values held dear within humanities departments (for the record, I'm a firm and old-school believer in the core values of the humanities). My experience of the 'innovation agenda' at UCD, however, is that it is really not only about commercialisation, and that the systems in place offer students of all disciplines really valuable tools regardless of their career path - from pure research to establishing a spin-out company. At the moment, I'm working towards setting up a project within UCD which will hopefully create a forum for discussion around this area, so will write more on this soon.
At the core of the matter, however, I feel that it is important for graduates to be supported, and that is really why systems such as the Innovation Academy and NovaUCD exist. I was the only humanities postdoc at the Commercialisation Bootcamp held at NovaUCD today, but I learned a huge amount which could be used in an IRC application as much as in a patent application.
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NovaUCD is an Innovation and Technology Transfer Centre based on the campus of University College Dublin (UCD). It has been in operation since 2003 and its general purpose is to take advantage of the ideas and innovation arising from the research programs of academia and and connect them by means of startup enterprises with the general market place
NovaUCD is an Innovation and Technology Transfer Centre based on the campus of University College Dublin (UCD). It has been in operation since 2003 and its general purpose is to take advantage of the ideas and innovation arising from the research programs of academia and and connect them by means of startup enterprises with the general market place.
