Research Policy
Research policy is an interdisciplinary field dedicated to the study of the management and governance of research and innovation. Research policy is located at the intersection between Science and Technology Studies (STS) and policy studies.
Research in research policy focuses on, among other issues:
- analysis of funding instruments and their impacts on knowledge production
- prioritisation and evaluation of research
- organisation of research and innovation
- research infrastructure
- university–industry collaboration.
Examples of research in research policy
An ongoing project in the research group is KNOWSCIENCE. This project focuses on understanding the interplay between policy instruments intended to govern higher education and research (HER) and the informal rules and processes that have developed for ensuring the quality of the knowledge they produce. We refer to this as the interplay between structural and epistemic governance. An understanding of this relationship is necessary for building sustainable knowledge producing institutions and securing society’s long-term knowledge provision.
The main research question guiding the project is: How do policy and the science systems co-produce the conditions for sustainable knowledge provision?
The research effort is organised around three questions:
- How are higher education and research (HER) policy steering mechanisms enabled, disabled and transformed throughout the HER sector via the academic social system?
- What are the most significant unintended consequences of HER policy on the HER system?
- What types of policy frameworks would be required to meet these challenges?
Contact: Professor Merle Jacob