The Covid experience of varying vaccine take-ups among different populations was perhaps the clearest illustration that the new frontiers of knowledge are not solely technical ones. Sometimes they are not even primarily technical.

As we try to solve some of the world’s greatest challenges, we are constantly being thwarted by our inability to successfully dovetail new technologies, such as AI and social media, with real human and social need. Redressing that situation demands the expertise of the humanities.

Yet leaders in the field are having to spend a lot of their time defending the humanities: from misperceptions, and from strange parodies in the public discourse. The problem is that this often ends up backing us into a defence of the status quo – something that does not help us move forward in constructive ways. Our disciplines have evolved continuously over the years and the worst thing we can do is to batten down the hatches.

Much of what has been written in defence of the humanities focuses on what we currently do and what we currently offer. In other words, the focus is on what’s precious to us. But how much time do we spend thinking about what others need from us? A discipline might most naturally be thought of as an intellectual project rather than a service but if we want that project to stay alive and relevant, we must engage more strongly with the factors that give it a place in society.

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I believe that our advocacy is strongest when it shows, rather than tells, how we can help with the things people care about – and when we think more about going to our audiences where they are, rather than working ever harder to bring them to where we are.

At King’s College London, where I recently finished six years as executive dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities, we added to the offer in those areas where student recruitment had become challenging to increase the reach of our work. New programmes brought the skills and expertise of staff to new audiences in new ways.

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For example, in addition to continuing with their existing programmes, colleagues from Classics, modern languages and liberal arts developed King’s first online humanities programme. Called Global Cultures, this consisted of both theory and practice modules. Students who would never have taken a degree in “modern languages” or “Classics” signed up – and staff in those areas were able to connect their interests meaningfully with new and larger audiences.?

Similar initiatives to diversify our offer followed, including setting up continuing professional development courses for industries that recognise the need to combine technical expertise with a knowledge of ethics, human culture, media and society. These initiatives contributed to financial sustainability at the same time as ensuring that our offer remained relevant.

In research, the challenge for the humanities is similarly about demonstrating our relevance to broader audiences and bigger questions, particularly where that isn’t immediately obvious. At King’s, we created two interdisciplinary challenge-led institutes (the Digital Futures Institute and the Global Cultures Institute), enabling the grouping of research initiatives under broader umbrellas to give them more visibility. Fellowships at these institutes gave colleagues the time to develop large, radically interdisciplinary team-based projects with collaborators from across the university. This seeded new ways of working on contemporary challenges.

We also updated our public engagement strategy, setting up the Curiosity Cabinet in a tiny shop next to the King’s campus that was too small for most other uses. We used its large corner window as a display box for a variety of intriguing objects related to our research, with text and QR code links so that the public could find out more about them. This showcased the ways in which the humanities contribute to our understanding of the many weird and wonderful things that make up the true richness of the world.

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All such initiatives, however, will come to nothing if we don’t also change our training, our career progression incentives and the way we structure our knowledge projects. Why don’t we do more to train our PhD students (and, indeed, our more senior colleagues) in interdisciplinary team-working or in writing for public audiences? Are we adequately encouraging and supporting collaboration that crosses the structural faculty divides within our institutions?

And are we really rewarding the varied outputs of major interdisciplinary grants when they don’t fall into our traditional categories? Have we accepted that if we are to recognise a broader portfolio of outputs, we need performance frameworks that properly acknowledge that colleagues may do less of some of the things that have previously been central to career progression? We need new infrastructures that both support and recognise the new ways of working that are essential to evolving our disciplines.

I recently joined the Edinburgh Futures Institute because of the unique potential it holds within the UK to develop new infrastructures of knowledge, enabling a step change in our ability to respond to some of the greatest challenges of our times. The institute works across all schools in the university, and witnessing the role that the humanities play in this mix is truly inspiring; it is a role that could be played much more widely.

Humanities disciplines have rich and valuable histories but that doesn’t mean we can’t continue to evolve. And if we accept the challenge, the future of our fields is likely to be healthier than we are often inclined to believe.

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is director of the Edinburgh Futures Institute and professor of culture and technology at the University of Edinburgh. She was previously executive dean of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities at King’s College London.