Could we do more for talented and ambitious students?
This is the first time that Assistant Professor Mathias Clasen has seen a student get an article published in a scientific journal. But it is not the first time he has encountered particularly talented and ambitious students, and neither is it the first time he has used his own time to help them. Which leads him to ask whether AU could do more for the particularly ambitious students – and perhaps focus even more on elite programmes and honours courses.
"You typically meet one or two students in each year group who really stand out from the crowd. I find myself in a dilemma every time they contact me. I’m an assistant professor and should in principle be busy positioning myself for a permanent tenure position. In this context, spending my time helping ambitious students doesn’t count for much. But on the other hand, saying no to them would also be tragic," says Mathias Clasen, assistant professor of English at the Department of Communication and Culture.
The popcultural villain is antisocial
In his article “Evil Origins: A Darwinian Genealogy of the Popcultural Villain”, Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen examines the role of the villain in popular cultural works by means of evolutionary and social psychological theory and empirical data.
Mathias Clasen, who is an expert in the horror genre, explains what Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen’s article contributes to current research in the field: "Jens concludes that there exists an universal villain culture with a basic structure that is linked to the way in which we, as humans, are constructed."
The popcultural villain is, among other things, characterised by an antisocial ethos that is rooted in human biology. Mathias Clasen explains: "There is something fundamental in human beings which makes us believe that something is evil. We’re relatively egalitarian and don’t therefore care for dictatorship and other forms of dominance. We experience being prosocial as a good thing, and being antisocial as an evil. And this has a function in relation to strengthening hostility towards power hungry individuals."
So when the villain of popcultural films and literature is presented as being antisocial, this also contributes towards praising prosocial and egalitarian behaviour. Academically interesting But according to Mathias Clasen, Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen’s research is also interesting because it is interdisciplinary. "This is a good example of how interdisciplinarity gives us an insight we would not have had otherwise. Jens uses evolutionary theories from social psychology and biology to say something about a humanistic topic, namely popculture. And that’s something that is academically interesting for us – either because we find it significant like I do, or because we find it really provoking. So he contributes to the debate on interdisciplinarity within the humanities and the question of whether research in the humanities should make use of approaches that are more natural scientific."
A delicate balancing act
That was why Mathias Clasen also chose to get involved when his student Jens Kjeldgaard-Christiansen demonstrated that he was both hungry for an academic career and able to present an intellectual piece of work of a calibre that could lead to publication.
"He had to publish precisely because it is unheard of for a student to be published. It also takes something out of the ordinary to be awarded a PhD scholarship. You have to be able to stand out. Having the best marks isn’t enough. You need something more," says Mathias Clasen.
But at the same time, there is a delicate balancing act involved in supporting ambitious students so they can realise their potential, without giving them false hope that a PhD is just around the corner. As he says, getting a PhD scholarship in the humanities requires almost as luck as winning the national lottery.
Up to the individual lecturer
Mathias Clasen would like to see AU do more for the talented and ambitious students, so that it was not only up to the individual lecturer to find the time to provide additional supervision and help for these students, in addition to the supervision that the lecturers are obliged to provide.
"Perhaps they could consider an elite or honours course for the students who have the will and ability, where they were given extra hard training? Or some extra funding from the department for lecturers to apply to cover the hours spent on supervising ambitious students, so that it’s not a case of completely voluntary work like it is now," suggests Mathias Clasen and emphasises that it must not affect students who do not aspire to taking a PhD degree.
Translated by Peter Lambourne