CARL GOMBRICH - BLOG

An occasional paper given at The Faculty Institute of Graduate Studies (FIGS) within the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at UCL November, 2013. Academic Empathy: A concept worth bearing in mind? Abstract Talk of empathy is everywhere: in science, the humanities, business and politics. Yet do we, as academics, think enough about how it applies to us in our academic and intellectual lives?  This paper introduces the concept of Academic Empathy in order to clarify how empathy mig

I blogged recently on dilettantism. This was intended as a piece of provocation. But it was also, in my view, an optimistic take on the ‘New Renaissance’ brought about by the knowledge revolution and new ways of learning and working that we are seeing. The suggestions were meant as playfully speculative, in line with the subject matter. I was surprised, then, when talking to my dad last week, to hear that many of the contributors to his new learned journal of the Oxford Centr

I am one of those who has enjoyed taking a pop at many academic economists recently. Informally and to friends, I have compared academic economists of today to medieval scholastics: both beavering away on something which is more or less completely disconnected from and irrelevant to what the public understands them to be doing. In medieval times you have cloistered and often privileged monks debating theological niceties while those outside are ravaged by hunger, disease and

As I read more on interdisciplinarity, learn more about it through my daily work, talk more to colleagues who do fascinating interdisciplinary work and lead fascinating interdisciplinary lives, there is pressure on me to become an expert in the discipline of interdisciplinarity. There is something obviously ridiculous about this, and I am resisting. Although I think that so far I am right to resist in this case, it forces me to reflect on what might be perceived as a lack of