Research within the spheres of the arts and humanities merits greater acknowledgment, suggests a recent report commissioned by the University of Cambridge.

The research organisation RAND Europe conducted a recent study at the request of the University of Cambridge and the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The aim of the investigation was to examine the ways in which university research into the arts and humanities is contributing to society.

Using the University of Cambridge as an example, evidence was taken from a survey of almost 300 researchers. In addition, exhaustive interviews and case studies were conducted both within and outside the University. Each stage of the project was linked to the ensuing outcomes, giving a sense of the breadth and scale of impact across the project as a whole.

"This survey is unusual in its depth and breadth," said Professor Simon Franklin, Head of the School of Arts and Humanities at the University of Cambridge.

"RAND Europe have not taken the common route of focusing only on the obvious types of immediate impact this research has. Their report also confronts the more difficult and fundamental questions of the longer-term impact of in-depth, curiosity-driven research. It should play a significant role in taking forward this debate, which has become so important both to the funding bodies and to the universities themselves."

The study reflects the significance which arts and humanities research currently exhibits and demonstrates that such research is able to generate a variety of "vital public benefits." It argues that the research of academics is habitually "seeping into intellectual life" in order to elevate and develop public understanding. 64% of academics who participated in the survey said that their work had influenced policy-making, while an "overwhelming majority" reported that their industry had spread to a national or international level.

Some of the ways in which research has impacted the public include arts festivals, exhibitions and translations. Researchers in the Faculty of English, for example, were able to make copies of a fragile medieval manuscript available online internationally.

It is hoped that these results will provide a model which other institutions can use in order to pursue and analyze the benefits of research in their own faculties of arts and humanities.