Our EURECIA academic research project comes at an exciting time for the organisation of European science.

The European research funding landscape has been changing in far-reaching ways, including the formal launch of the European Research Council (ERC) in 2007. The ERC is a potentially transformative force for science at European and national levels.

EURECIA runs from 2009 to 2011. During this time we will develop and apply a novel conceptual framework and methodology to help us better understand the dynamics of the European research system and the ERC’s activities. This will allow us to prepare the ground for future assessments of the impact of research policy schemes by tackling various long-standing challenges about how to properly register and attribute change to specific policy influences, in this case the ERC and its funding schemes (the ERC Starting Independent Researcher Grant and the ERC Advanced Investigators Grant). We will also explore intended and unintended impacts from the point of view of researchers, research communities, research organisations, research funders, and on the governance of science.