Clio answers academic questions

A Cambridge graduate history student has won the 2001 Palgrave/THES Humanities and Social Science prize for an essay on the past and future of the university.

Mike Finn is a graduate student at Magdalene College, Cambridge where he is studying for an MPhil in Economic and Social History. His essay tackles the subject of the history and prospects of higher education by asking the question 'Who are academics and what is their role?' Finn argues that the classic academic figure of the past, satirised by Hillaire Belloc as "the remote and ineffectual don", does not reflect our contemporary realities. Academics are now "in the shop window" - held to democratic account through quality inspections and the Research Assessment Exercise but also more willing to engage in the free exchange of ideas with a wider public audience.

This desire for greater public engagement is perhaps most visible in the phenomenon of academic superstars, such as the Cambridge historian Dr David Starkey and the Oxford scientist Professor Susan Greenfield. Finn argues that the search for a wider public is not simply a easy to route to fast cash from TV tie-ins, but a vital social imperative, a challenge for all academics at the beginning of the third millennium.

Mike Finn specialises in cultural history, primarily British and German social history since 1870 and the history of social thought. His MPhil thesis - a study of cultural projects in East London, 1870-1914 - is supervised by Professor Gareth Stedman Jones, co-director of the Centre for History and Economics at King's College, where Mike is a prize research student.

The essay prize, of £2,000 and £500 of Palgrave books, was presented to Mike on Wednesday 14 November, 2001 at the What is History Now? conference held at the Institute of Historical Research, London. The essay was published in the Times Higher Education Supplement on 9 November, 2001.