Are historians valuable in 2024? Perspectives of an interdisciplinary researcher

By Fionnuala Braun

Every month, my team at SPHERU (Saskatchewan Population Health and Evaluation Research Unit) meets to discuss the progress of our work and share professional development ideas. At the first meeting of the year, we all had to tell a bit about ourselves: our name, degree, and what project we were assigned to. Working around the room, it became clear I was in the company of medical doctors, public health researchers, and quantitative data specialists. When my turn came, I had never felt so out of place.

“I’m a recent history graduate, working mainly on homosexual societies and identity in 1950s France. I also work on a project looking at magic practitioners in 13^th-century Europe. And, I’m helping to write about the COVID-19 pandemic’s effects on Saskatchewan.”

I also admitted that this was a departure from the rest of the introductions in the room. Honestly, I had a limited understanding of the difference between qualitative and quantitative research– and I certainly hadn’t fully understood most of the projects my colleagues had described. As much as they had seemed bemused by my work, so too was I by theirs. I remember wondering if these differences would be reconcilable.

This discomfort coloured my earliest months working as a researcher on a community health-based project – the distinct worry that my skills might not be relevant. As a historian, to be surrounded by researchers who work primarily with quantitative datasets (what on Earth is a p-value?) and determine significance based on seemingly obscure numerical values was daunting. Never had I felt more separated from my work as a historian. It seemed like there would be no space to tell the stories of individuals whose experiences might not be considered “statistically significant” but whose lives are, nonetheless, a part of the tapestry that makes up our socio-political conditions.

What I quickly came to realize, though, was that telling the story of COVID-19’s effects meant moving beyond the statistically significant. The pandemic is a story that mostly played out at the margins of our society. It began that way and continues this way now. While most of us had the luxury of social distancing and masking, Saskatchewan’s Northern (and primarily Indigenous) communities struggled to acquire the necessities to stop viral spread [1]. And as Saskatchewan has declared the pandemic over, COVID-19 continues to ravage disadvantaged, unhoused, and low-income populations, both physically and economically [2, 3].

So, where do we, as historians, fit into an academic landscape that seems to place increasing value on quantitative analysis? How do we continue to justify our work when very little value is placed on it?

The answer, I believe, lies in sitting in the temporary discomfort of participating in interdisciplinary collaboration.

After almost a year of working on various collaborative projects in history and community health, I find it difficult to see a world where they don’t collaborate. Historians can provide essential context to the work done by public health researchers. We can read between the lines to write compelling stories that complement data-driven evidence and result in more robust reports and recommendations. In return, my colleagues in community health have exposed me to an enormous well of resources, research methods, and tools that apply not just to my work with SPHERU but also to my master’s thesis. We complement, learn from one another, and engage in some of the most critical conversations surrounding health justice and the pandemic. After many months, I realized I can no longer envision myself as a researcher focusing solely on one discipline. Instead, I see my skills and interests from one area interacting with all the others, forming a cohesive whole.

It took me a while to get there, though. I was still in the final semester of my undergraduate degree when I started working with SPHERU. At that point, my research goals only focused on history. Social sciences were, at best, something I had begrudgingly accepted as electives during my first and second years. In my history seminars, we often discussed how out of touch we found the scientific research community and how they seemed to focus on the present while not acknowledging or considering the past. There was competition, as well as a healthy dose of bitterness there. As history departments across Canada were experiencing funding cuts, we couldn’t help but feel that we were being undervalued and losing our opportunities, so it could be funnelled into disciplines that were not taking historically holistic approaches.

Now, though, I can’t help but think that more exposure to interdisciplinary work during my undergraduate degree would have shown me how much room there is for historians in all forms of research.

As we move into a time when the humanities are seeing less funding, less tenured positions, and less value on the job market, now may be the moment to introduce history students to the diversity of their skills. By empowering them to look beyond what they might assume they can do with a history degree, we can demonstrate to students and researchers that historians have much to offer the broader research community.

These transitions are uncomfortable. They involve stepping outside individualistic approaches and recognizing research as an opportunity for collaboration instead of competition. However, reflecting on my undergraduate degree, I know I wanted to make meaningful changes in our society in whatever form it took. Students want to be the change – and they want opportunities to collaborate, be creative, and demonstrate that their skills are valuable.

One way or another, the landscape of research is changing. More and more frequently, students like myself find themselves at the difficult crossroads of choosing between doing what they love and surviving in an increasingly unaffordable world. While my reflections are those of a person disquieted by their lack of experience (I still haven’t quite figured out what logistical regression is), I hope that they show that this discomfort is impermanent and, I believe, necessary. Historians have the tools that the research world needs. We can make meaningful contributions to interdisciplinary scholarship and policy discussions. As we start to train a new generation of passionate students about thinking historically, perhaps it’s time that we teach them to take advantage of opportunities beyond the confines of our departments.

Fionnuala Braun recently graduated from the Department of History at the University of Saskatchewan. She is beginning an MA at Carleton University. She worked as a research assistant with the Remember Rebuild Saskatchewan Project.