Klara Müller

I was a PhD candidate at the Division for History of Science, Technology and Environment between 2021–2025, as a part of the projectMaking Universities Matter. I defended my thesis Quality and the Humanities: Negotiating Research Quality in Swedish Humanities, 1980s-2020s on November 14, 2025. Since December 1st, I work within the projectHumanities in Transition at Stockholm University, and can be reached through the address klara.muller@biling.su.se.

I have a background in the History of Science and Ideas as well as Media History, with degrees from Uppsala University (2020) and Lund University (2018). I have also studied archival science and literary studies. Thorugh these fields, I have been able to unite my interest for the historical changes of conditions for knowledge production and circulation. This has also been visible in my previous work which for example concerned how medical knowledge has been affected by new technologies and changing bureaucratic practices.

My thesis dealt with how conceptions of "research quality" in the humanities changed since the 1980s, until 2020. The project was located at the intersection between fields such as research policy, STS and the history of humanities.

From the late twentieth century, processes aiming at quality gained ground in research policy. These aligned broader societal movements toward procedures such as quality assurance, auditing, and management, often grouped under New Public Management (NPM). This thesis investigates how the emergence of this regulatory discourse on quality has affected perceptions of what constitutes quality in the humanities. Unlike much existing work on research quality, which concentrates on STEM fields, this thesis centers on the humanities. The humanities are not treated here as outliers or latecomers in policy, but rather as areas of scholarly production with distinctive quality cultures. Drawing on archival material, policy documents, interviews, and academic publications, the thesis examines selected “quality sites,” including research seminars, editorial peer review, disciplinary evaluations, and research policy discussions. The cases demonstrate that established quality cultures existed within the humanities well before the formalization of quality procedures. They further show how humanities scholars have not only been passive or reactive recipients of new quality discourses and requirements but have developed responsive quality articulations – contextual adaptations that have integrated new requirements with existing internal practices. Changing conceptions and practices of quality have also contributed to the reshaping of the humanities, for example, through the broad introduction of a formalized practice of peer review in Swedish humanities journals. By moving beyond binary oppositions, such as the distinction between measurable and intrinsic, or neoliberal and disciplinary, the thesis gives a historically grounded account of how quality has been conceptualized and practiced in the humanities. In doing so, it nuances previous accounts of the history of the humanities since the 1980s. It contributes new perspectives on the history of research quality and theoretical tools for analyzing research quality in a historical context. The findings of the thesis invite a rethinking of what research quality means, not merely as a policy concept, but as a lived and developing scholarly practice within the humanities.