The pop/alternative musician Beck created a stir in the music world when he released his 2012 “album” Song Reader as a book compilation of individual pieces of sheet music. This included a guide to reading music notation, together with an introduction describing the work’s intentions and inviting readers to perform their own versions of the songs. Two years later, a recording of the songs interpreted ...

There is an increasing recognition that there is a class of problems that society must solve urgently in the twenty-first century if humanity is to survive into the twentysecond century—the so-called ‘Grand Challenges’. Science policymakers have been active in recognising these challenges and the attendant need to develop new multidisciplinary ways of working. But embracing multidisciplinarity ...

“Race is not a problem here.” “Racism is rare in Scandinavia.” These are some of the comments I (Kate) have heard regarding my efforts to diversify the music history and analysis curriculum at a small conservatoire in Norway, the Academy of Music at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, in Tromsø. One thing I hear behind both of these is the implication that, as a non-Scandinavian, I do not ...

There has been demand in many countries for the establishment of small campuses in more rural locations to spread the benefits of higher education both through the provision of university courses and through the positive economic spill-overs for these communities. Evaluations of the impacts of these universities according to current models show limited effects due to their small scale and specialization. ...

In this era of change, when the placement of the arts is coming under scrutiny at local, national, and international levels, the time seems right to explore the role of the artist (broadly understood) in multidisciplinary contexts. What can we offer, what can others offer us, and how can such partnerships succeed?

In A Woman in the Polar Night (Eine Frau erlebt die Polarnacht, 1938), Christiane Ritter, a well-to-do Austrian housewife, describes her experience as the first central European woman to overwinter on Svalbard (1934–35). Ritter’s prose is extraordinary in its lyrical simplicity, and in German editions the text is interspersed with her paintings of the scenes that at first were so alien and changing, ...

The research “sandpit”, where a cross-disciplinary group of academics and practitioners come together for a short time to create new projects around a given theme, is gaining ground as a way to foster innovation and creativity in research design. While sandpits can spark ideas for novel projects better suited to tackling grand challenges and urgent questions, research from Kate Maxwell, Paul Benneworth, ...