In January, Oxford University Press announced its support for SHAPE, a new collective name for the humanities, arts, and social sciences and an equivalent term to STEM. SHAPE stands for Social Sciences, Humanities, and the Arts for People and the Economy and aims to underline the value that these disciplines bring to society. Over the last year or so, huge attention has—rightly—been placed on scientific and technological advancement but does that mean we’re overlooking the contribution of SHAPE in finding solutions to global issues?

Today’s episode of The Oxford Comment brings together two leading voices from SHAPE and STEM disciplines to discuss how we might achieve greater balance between sciences and the arts. In the episode, Dr Kathryn Murphy, a Fellow in English Literature at Oriel College at the University of Oxford and the co-editor of On Essays, and Professor Tom McLeish, inaugural Professor of Natural Philosophy in the Department of Physics at the University of York and the author of The Poetry and Music of Science, discuss the origins of the SHAPE/STEM divide and what might be done to address it.

Learn more about On Essays and Kathryn Murphy here: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/on-essays-9780198707868

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Music: Filaments by Podington Bear is licensed under an Attribution-NonCommercial 3.0 International License.

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