Photo credits: Alex Blajan unsplash Justinas Lingevicius The emerging AI policy of the European Union (EU), new financial instruments and institutional entities dedicated to boosting emerging technologies including AI, suggest that the EU approaches technological developments strategically and aims to play a role in their international development and regulation. However, the EU position on military AI – the wide-ranging issue of future security with multiple potential effects and forms of application – appears diluted in the emerging EU AI policy due to different institutional priorities. T ..read more

Ingvild Reymert Two newly published papers investigate variation in professorial recruitment both across countries and disciplines but also within these processes which must be understood as sequential decision-making processes. Academic recruitments are crucial decision-making processes for universities where those hired are responsible for carrying out the universities’ two key missions: teaching and research. Academic recruitments are also highly important for academics as these processes represent critical junctures for their career. Hence, it is no surprise that academic recruitment often ..read more

Photo from depositphotos.com Sara Diogo, Bruno Vilhena and Teresa Carvalho Scientific work has been gaining increased attention and importance in the public policy arena, conveyed by the fact that scientific knowledge is essential to promote economic and social development (Carvalho 2021). Much of this attention stems from the changes that the academic careers and more specifically working conditions in academia have been going through in the last decades, and which have been documented in higher education research (Parsons & Platt 1968; Jones 2013; Henkel 2007; Enders & Musselin 200 ..read more

Inga Ulnicane What is the purpose of developing and using Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Is it to boost economic growth and competitiveness? Or should it contribute to tackling grand societal challenges and achieving Sustainable Development Goals in areas such as health, environment and energy? Can AI contribute to the both?   I examine these questions in my new article ‘Emerging technology for economic competitiveness or societal challenges? Framing purpose in Artificial Intelligence policy’ (Ulnicane 2022). This article is part of my broader research programme on AI governance, politics ..read more

ECPR Standing Group Knowledge Politics and Policies at the ECPR General Conference 2022 in Innsbruck It was particular joy to meet again in person at the General Conference of the European Consortium of Politics Research (ECPR) last week 22-26 August. After two years of virtual conferences due to Covid, this time the ECPR General Conference took place in the beautiful city of Innsbruck in the Austrian Alps. It brought together more than 1500 participants in more than 500 panels as well as roundtables on some of the troubling current topics such as the war in Ukraine and equality, diversity a ..read more

WorldCould. Author’s illustration Anna-Lena Rüland The world has seen a fair share of democratic backsliding in recent years, for example in countries like Turkey, the Philippines and Russia. Science diplomacy is often seen as a means to continue some sort of engagement with such regimes. Although it sounds great in theory, we do not yet know how exactly science diplomacy can facilitate engagement with autocratic states. I address this blind spot in my recent article “Learning from Rivals”, which features an in-depth case study of a US-Iranian collaboration in public health. In the article ..read more

Mitchell Young While, as the name of this blog reflects, knowledge has become a central concern in European policymaking internally, it has not made the same inroads into the EU’s external policy discourses. This neglect of knowledge in the field of international relations is not limited to the EU, but given the European policy context, one would expect that pursuing a Europe of Knowledge would have both an internal and an external rationale. Our recent article ‘Knowledge power Europe’ finds that the EU has indeed taken steps to mobilize its knowledge power externally, but these have been larg ..read more

Alina Constantin / Better Images of AI / Handmade A.I / CC-BY 4.0 Inga Ulnicane ‘… Europe is a unique aspiration. […] It is an aspiration of a world full of new technologies and age-old values’, Ursula von der Leyen, then incoming President of the European Commission, wrote in her political guidelines in 2019. Since then questions of new technologies and European values have been at the forefront of political discussions in Brussels and member states regarding Artificial Intelligence (AI), including preparations for the forthcoming AI Act and recently adopted Digital Services Act. These disc ..read more

Marina Cino Pagliarello The implementation of a common Higher Education policy has been a long-standing objective of the European Union (Corbett, 2005). The launch of the Bologna Process in 1999 with its aim of creating a European Higher Education Area (EHEA) and the establishment of the European Research Area (ERA) have been important drivers in the construction of a single market for education, although they can be considered a mixed story of success and failure. As analysed by an extensive body of literature, both the EHEA and the ERA have been characterized by an uneven and fragmented impl ..read more

Kasja Weenink The study ‘We’re stubborn enough to create our own world’ (Weenink, Aarts, & Jacobs, 2021) addresses how directors of educational programs understand and enact higher education quality in interdependence with its environment. It reveals that the directors’ room to play out their quality views depends on their position within the academic hierarchy and that they flexibly adjust the notion of quality to limiting circumstances. Whereas quality’s plasticity and vague appeal enabled the rearrangement of academic steering relations in the 1980’s and 1990’s, it currently prevents s ..read more