How do deans of humanities understand and enact societal engagement within their broader experiences of leading? A Danish case study
研究丹麦人文学科院长的领导角色，发现他们通过个人价值观和责任感来推动大学与社会的深度互动，为理解人文学科的社会嵌入性提供了新视角。
Globally, universities have experienced growing policy demands and societal expectations, including being engaged societal actors – with senior university leaders expected to strategically address these requirements. To understand the specificity of leadership around this issue, we focused on one disciplinary cluster, the humanities, often seen as particularly challenged regarding such engagement. We asked: How do Deans of Faculties of Humanities in Denmark understand and enact university-societal engagement within their lived experience of negotiating multiple responsibilities? Our in-depth qualitative study focused first on their general stance on their role responsibilities. The analysis highlighted a shared sense that they must make the ‘tough decisions’ with variation in how they characterised this responsibility. They also articulately described a range of values underpinning their thinking and action – something not previously reported. These two, their responsibilities and personal values, scaffolded how they understood and enacted their deep commitment to societal engagement, recognising that humanities was often a particular point of contention. To enact their stance, they sought a broad knowledge of researchers’ projects in order to legitimately and respectfully represent their faculties and the researchers within them to societal actors – with the aim to expand networks, collaborate on research and show how to jointly address societal problems. The results offer a nuanced perspective of the humanities as deeply societally embedded – despite contentious national policies. They complement the existing scholarly discussion largely situated around individual researcher engagement – highlighting the importance of a collective perspective on establishing relevance.