There is an assumption that research in the humanities must be modeled after research in the sciences. For instance, that research groups should be as large as possible, with scholars working in the typical engineering fashion—breaking problems into small tasks, distributing them among different people, and then assembling the results into a collective paper signed by dozens of authors.
However, significant research in the humanities does not function this way. A humanities scholar must engage with a problem across all its different scales, from the micro to the macro, in a comprehensive and integrative manner. Conducting humanities research as if we were engineers in a lab may deceive some institutions and funding agencies, but it will inevitably produce insipid results and—perhaps even more tragically—alienate scholars from their profession.
I have reflected on the works that have most deeply influenced my own research—whether for their ambition, originality, or methodology. My own “fieldwork” exercise led to the following conclusions: none of these impactful works emerged from a lab-like project, nor were they deeply shaped by such an approach. Instead, they are all single-authored monographs.
This does not mean that the authors of these works did not engage in collective or collaborative efforts—they certainly did. But their collaboration took a different form: exchanging ideas, engaging in discussions, and refining their arguments rather than fragmenting their research into alienating micro-tasks. Moreover, most of them did not rely on large, exorbitantly funded research projects. Instead, they benefited from research leaves that allowed them the time and space to think, read, write, and engage in meaningful scholarly exchanges.