Over two days the team also updated each other with feedback and learning about our methods and research instruments. We also talked at some length about the ongoing integration of our various ‘work packages’ – including cross-cutting themes.

The project has recently been granted an extension. EURECIA’s project head, Dr Maria Nedeva, discussed this with the team in light of our planned final conference. News about this – and other relevant dissemination events – will be shared via the EURECIA website as soon as the appropriate details are confirmed.

In the meantime, here is a photo of most of the members of the EURECIA team, pictured within the research centre building occupied by the Manchester team (the MBS Manchester Institute of Innovation Research):

Dr Duncan Thomas

Dr Terttu Luukkonen addresses in this paper the evolution, concept and mechanisms of the European Research Area (ERA), including how the new European Research Council (ERC) and its programme fits into the ERA concept and was justified in ERA documents.

She explores how the debate on an ERC changed the ERA agenda. In her paper, Dr Luukkonen also highlights the fact that the ERC is in many ways a unique funding scheme, differing a great deal from other new funding instruments introduced at the same time.

You can access the paper via our Official Documents page or by using this direct link.

Dr Duncan Thomas

The project builds on the premise that the legitimacy of a research funding agency depends on the legitimacy of its core procedures and mechanisms. Core procedures are those applied in the process of distributing resources where more often than not some form of peer review is used.

There is also a comparative element to this study. This will involve examining peer review practices by research funding agencies both in European countries and in the United States.

Dr Duncan Thomas

A very early version of Maria’s paper was originally presented at the EGOS Colloquium held in Amsterdam during 10-12 July 2008. Later a more developed version of the paper was presented at the 9th Conference of the European Sociological Association (ESA) in Lisbon during September of this year.

Intellectually, the ideas in the paper helped shape the EURECIA proposal. They are also currently informing an imminent research proposal to the ESRC to study the change of the UK’s public system. This work is in conjunction with Prof. Rebecca Boden and Prof. Rosemary Deem and will be submitted shortly.

Please remember if you have any comments about our EURECIA papers do feel free to contact us.

Dr Duncan Thomas

Dr Duncan Thomas

Just over two weeks ago the EURECIA team met in Lausanne to discuss the project’s methodology, conceptualisation and upcoming fieldwork. The two-day meeting turned out to be a successful, productive and pleasant event. Although the team members are approaching the challenges of the project from different academic backgrounds and traditions, there has been a discernible integration of everyone’s views since our last team meeting in Manchester back in April 2009.

The meeting importantly also provided all the team members with a clear and shared understanding of the cases, countries and organisations we plan to address and approach within our research fieldwork. Everyone in the coming months will be finalising their research instruments then coordinating across the team to undertake the work so as to make the best and most efficient use of our travel and human resources, in line with our original plans in the project’s description of work.

We should also mention that we were very fortunate to have remarkably fine and sunny weather in Lausanne! We had a very busy schedule over the two days but managed to find a moment to gather the team together for a quick outdoor group photo in the sunshine. We’ve posted this below.

Dr Duncan Thomas

The EURECIA team will be meeting on Monday 26th October in Lausanne. We aim to discuss and integrate many challenging aspects of our conceptual and methodological work so far. This is before we shortly all embark on our first main stages of fieldwork.

We’ll post a short report back about the meeting here on our blog.

Please remember that you can also subscribe to our news feed to make sure you don’t miss any of our updates about the EURECIA project.

Dr Duncan Thomas

In the coming weeks and months we’ll also be adding new content to our resource centre including working papers and conference papers from the EURECIA team. We’ll be posting on our news blog when new items are added and we’ll also use the blog for updates about various other developments within the EURECIA project.

We firmly believe our research project is highly topical and intellectually challenging and may have significant implications for the ways in which academics and policy-makers think about the funding and assessment of European science and research. We are very much looking forward to sharing our debates and progress through the blog. We warmly invite your comments and open discussion about our ideas and findings.

We also hope to post details here soon about the EURECIA project’s final conference. You can sign up to email alerts from us about the conference on our contact page. You will then receive the first details as soon as they are announced.

Dr Duncan Thomas