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Can you guess which of the following is a genuine university discipline: Strollology, Hedonia and Eudaimonia, or Happiness Studies? The answer is all of them. The ‘science of strolling’ was first codified in the early 1990s by Lucius Burkhardt, the Swiss sociologist and founding Dean of the Bauhaus-University’s Faculty of Art & Design, which is where you can study the subject (it is taught in English). Alternatively, you could enrol at the University of Aberdeen and study under Timothy Ingold, Chair of Social Anthropology and the leading British proponent of promenadology (strollology’s alternative name). To quote the Bauhaus-University’s website: ‘for Ingold, Burkhardt, and others in this line of research, the power of meaning making is inherent to movement, not settings or objects’. Or, to put it in terms that even Sherds can understand, ‘the activity of walking significantly increases cognitive creativity’.
If you choose to study the subject, you will be expected to: ‘Consider walking as an activity supporting the processes of reflection, understanding, and ultimately coming up with new ideas. From Flânerie, to Dérive and urban wayfaring, to themed walks and walking activities, we will test different walking techniques to inform interdisciplinary creative processes and practice. Students will build a portfolio of works that facilitate an enhanced sense of where and how we are in place and time. These experiences will be developed into a personal “walking recipe” for future creative practice.’
Having packed a degree in strollology into your academic rucksack, you might want to hike to Oxford for a course in hedonia (meaning ‘pleasure’, from the Greek hedus, the sweet taste of honey) and eudaimonia (meaning a life well lived, one endowed with meaning and purpose). The university’s Centre for Eudaimonia and Human Flourishing is based at Linacre College and led by Professor Morten Kringelbach. The Centre describes its purpose as understanding the meaning-making processes of the brain that give us a sense of purpose and are fundamental to our flourishing. If you are at all hesitant about whether this topic is for you, bear in mind that two key areas of research are the ‘indisputable sensory pleasures of food and sex’. If you are more cerebral, there is an alternative, which is to study the strong emotions evoked by music.
Alternatively, you could travel a bit further to work for a PhD in Happiness Studies at Centenary University in Hackettstown, New Jersey. According to the prospectus at Centenary, Happiness Studies bring together psychology, neuroscience, finance, business, literature, coaching, religion, and music to explore the implications of happiness for individuals and broader society. Described as ‘revolutionary’, the fast-growing field of happiness science is ‘based in the recognition that there are high economic and human costs associated with mental health’.
Degree courses axed
Perhaps your hedonic studies will leave you with a sense of well-being that prevents you from becoming too distressed at what is happening elsewhere in the groves of academe. According to Times Higher Education, 3,900 degree courses have been dropped this year – 8.7 per cent of the 45,000 undergraduate courses currently on offer at UK universities – with knock-on effects for academic employment. This has not just affected staff at so-called ‘low-tariff’ institutions (those that take students with lower A-level grades). The University of Leicester, for example, plans to reduce its annual staff budget by £11 million. Among subjects targeted for reduction and restructuring is the School of History, which includes the highly regarded Centre for Local History. Bournemouth University, meanwhile, has announced significant reductions in Archaeology teaching. Slowly the growth in Archaeology departments in UK universities that we saw in the 1970s is being unwound half a century on.
Falling student numbers (especially overseas students who pay higher fees) combined with frozen tuition fees and higher costs are given as the main reasons for such cuts. All told, about 250,000 academics were employed by UK universities in 2023, but 12,000 jobs were cut last year, and 3,000 more redundancies are under consideration. Of the 106 officially designated universities in England, 42 are believed to be in financial deficit, according to the Office for Students, the independent regulator of higher education in England.
Why Study Humanities?
The cuts have fallen most heavily on the Humanities, despite a recent report from University College London (UCL), which finds that investment in culture is essential to stimulating economic growth. Mariana Massucato, Professor in the Economics of Innovation and Public Value at UCL and the author of a new report on ‘The Public Value of Arts and Culture’ argues that ‘we need to move away from viewing arts and culture as a cost and towards recognising them as an investment’.
Contradicting current attempts to devise ways to measure the value of heritage, the report argues that arts and culture are bound to be undervalued by the conventional evaluation methods used by economists. These often express the value of the Humanities in terms of their contribution to GDP rather than their ability to shape minds and foster creativity. As a result, culture is consistently undervalued, and cultural spending is frequently the first to be cut during periods of austerity – local authority spending per person on culture fell by 48 per cent in the year 2022-2023.
Perhaps another reason for such cuts can be found in the report’s suggestion that ‘culture is a catalyst for social and political change’. One cannot imagine that the idea of political change would go down very well with those who have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.
England’s first king?
Over the next two years, we are going to hear much about the Normans. Nobody knows when William the Conqueror was born, but the Normandy Regional Government has decided that 1027 is as good a candidate as any and so has declared 2027 – the 1,000th anniversary – to be the Year of the Normans. As well as the much-publicised special Bayeux Tapestry exhibition at the British Museum, the British Library is planning to mark the year with a display of manuscripts from the period. The Tower of London is just one of many castles that will be getting on board, as will York Minster and other cathedrals rebuilt by the Normans in Caen stone.
One hopes that all of this commemoration will not overshadow another 2027 anniversary. Cambridge historian David Woodman has just published The First King of England, in which he argues that we should recognise the achievements of Æthelstan (c.894-939) as the first ruler to establish something recognisable as an English state.
Having been crowned King of Wessex and Mercia in 925, he defeated a Viking army at York in 927 to take control of Northumbria, and he subsequently extended his rule into parts of Scotland. Michael Wood and Tom Holland are among those supporting David Woodman’s campaign for a statue or plaque marking the spot in Eamont Bridge, Cumbria, where a Great Council took place on 12 July 927. It was there that the other English rulers paid homage to Æthelstan, recognising his authority as the first king of all the English.
Historians have tended to neglect Æthelstan’s status because his kingdom fragmented soon after his death. The deeds of subsequent rulers, such as the church-reforming King Eadgar (c.944-975), have overshadowed Æthelstan’s earlier sponsorship of learning after the decline resulting from Viking raids on monastic and church communities.
Government became increasingly centralised during Æthelstan’s reign, with one scribe put in charge of producing royal documents who would travel with the king wherever he went. Legal documents from Æthelstan’s reign survive in relative abundance, now housed in the British Library, and they show that he sent law codes out to different parts of the kingdom, and then acted on the reports he received back about what was working and what changes needed to be made. He also held consultative assemblies involving hundreds of people. David Woodman believes we need to recognise that his methods of governing and legislating shaped concepts of kingship for successor generations.
One town in England that has not forgotten Æthelstan is Malmesbury: his precise burial place in the Abbey has never been found – and his much later tomb, with its 14th-century effigy, contains no bones – but it marks the start of the newly designated Athelstan Pilgrim Way, a 100-mile hiking and cycling trail that links 36 churches in North Wiltshire.
