The desired outcomes and impact of the ERC’s funding schemes primarily relate to research capacity.
They are intended to develop and support European researchers and through that affect the strategies and priorities Europe’s research organisations (universities and research institutes) so as to enable them to become global players.
In the process, researchers, their competencies and career paths will be affected. They may have increased conference attendance, increased leadership skills or increased networking possibilities. The organisation of science, as epistemic communities, networks and organisations will be affected. There may be increased internationalisation and globalisation of universities and research organisations. European researchers may move from the periphery to the centre of epistemic networks in particular research fields. The governance of science will also be affected. The long-term strategies of national research councils and the strategic activities of European organisations and initiatives may be affected.
At the same time research content will also be affected. The ERC was the first European level organisation dedicated to funding investigator-driven, fundamental research primarily on the basis of (the promise of) its excellence, innovativeness and transformative potential. There is not intended to be consideration of traditional European research funding concerns such as national coordination, juste retour or additionality. The aim is to fund research that is frontier, or more strictly speaking has the potential to become frontier (if the right researchers are funded in the right organisations and the right national settings).
Tracing such changes is recognised to be one of the most difficult tasks of science studies. Causally attributing these changes to specific innovations in governance, such as the ERC and its funding schemes, is equally challenging. At all times such innovations are embedded in wider, ever-shifting complex governance regimes. In previous academic and private consultancy research, funding schemes impacts have been notoriously difficult to trace. They are even harder to attribute.
In the EURECIA project we define such impacts as ‘attributable differences’ explicitly to focus our methodology, conceptual development and fieldwork exactly on this issue. We are boldly aiming to report about robustly measured and properly attributed impacts (both intended and unintended) from the ERC’s schemes.
We are therefore developing an integrated methodology and have dedicated an entire work package to this issue of how to identify and attribute ERC impact. One key feature is our use of a ‘control group’ of researchers that passed the quality threshold for ERC funding but did not receive grants. We will compare this control group to researchers who were awarded grants. We view these two groups as sufficiently similar in all respects except the receipt (or not) of ERC funding. This fieldwork approach is intended to help us determine which impacts and outcomes are attributable to the ERC funding.
We are also developing a conceptual framework to analyse the impact of the ERC funding schemes in their interaction with existing national and transnational governance regimes. We are drawing on a wide range of qualitative and quantitative methods to testing our ideas and to provide initial data on how the researchers, research organisations, research funding organisations, and the wider context of national and transnational governance of science, operate and interact.
EURECIA also aims to provide outputs that assist the ERC’s strategy processes and help it to scrutinise its objectives. We are in close consultation with key ERC stakeholders and a high-level advisory committee with significant relevant experience. We are currently developing ideas and assumptions about both possible and desirable impacts and about how they are related to particular social and political conditions. We will determine which conceptual frameworks, methodologies and data are the most relevant and helpful to the ERC’s future monitoring and evaluation processes. We will also offer our perspective on why we believe it is important to understand and assess the impact and outcomes of the ERC’s funding schemes given their wider socio-political setting in Europe and worldwide.
The work of the EURECIA project is clearly challenging. We are also likely to be working beyond the remit and experience of existing academic literature and research studies to delve into new and original areas. In many ways, we echo the ethos of the ERC’s funding schemes themselves. We intend to carry out high-quality, rigorous academic research that has the potential to become ‘frontier’ in its own right and to provide benchmarks and signposts for research organisations experimenting with the new and evolving funding, policy and governance landscape for European science.
This kind of creative, path-breaking research requires strong academic leadership and a flexible, imaginative and driven academic team. We are excited by the issues and believe we have put together an international, multi-disciplinary team of academic experts who are highly familiar with the strengths of the existing European science governance and policy arena and at the same time have the right knowledge and skills to perceive and move beyond its weaknesses.
You can read more our team using the link at the top of this page. You can also continue to read more about some of EURECIA’s main themes and work packages using the links to the right.
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