History and Research Assessment Exercises

While it is recognised that Research Assessment Exercises stimulate activity and that successive history panels have sensitively developed appropriate procedures, nonetheless there is much unease among university historians about the impact of RAEs on their subject. This paper argues that such concern reflects characteristics of the discipline that make selective funding of university departments of history especially awkward. Historians study as individuals and as specialists, not in departmental teams. Resources-especially time free from teaching and administrative burdens-have not been equally distributed between university departments, and in consequence RAEs in history are likely simply to confirm the wisdom of past funding decisions. The identification of 'international excellent' historians is particularly problematic. And distortions arising from the tendency of university managements to treat RAEs as a game rewarding the tactically astute exert a damaging influence: good research will not be achieved by bullying historians to produce a monograph for every RAE.