Alina Isakova, Malte Neuwinger, Robin Schulze Waltrup, and Oday Uraiqat Climate change, authoritarianism, poverty, terrorism, energy-shortages, genocide, population growth. These are only some of the global challenges the world is currently facing. Lists of global challenges seek to identify the greatest of them, international organizations like the United Nations take them as the starting point for their Sustainable Development Goals, and non-governmental groups like the World Economic Forum put them at the top of their political agenda. The language of global challenges has become part of ag ..read more

Workshop participants Alina Felder Last month, the first endorsed workshop by the ECPR Standing Group Knowledge Politics and Policies unfolded at the ECPR Joint Sessions of Workshops in Lüneburg (Germany). The workshop with the theme “The Politics and Policies of Skills Shortage” brought together thirteen scholars from across Europe who are working on the issue of skills shortage from different disciplinary angles. Alina Felder (University of St. Gallen) and Niccolo Durazzi (University of Edinburgh) directed the workshop which lasted from 25 to 27 March 2024 at the premises of Leuphana Unive ..read more

Inga Ulnicane How to align research and innovation with values, needs and expectations of society? During the past ten years, researchers, policy-makers and funders in Europe have developed and supported the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) approach to address societal aspects of research and innovation early on. This approach aims to go beyond risk management and have a broader focus on the purpose of research and innovation. It involves a range of anticipation, reflection, engagement, and action mechanisms to involve society and foster interdisciplinary collaborations to shape resea ..read more

www.vegeldaniel.com Adrienn Nyircsak Higher education is increasingly transformed through internationalisation and Europeanisation. One of the drivers of this change is the emergence of transnational stakeholder communities who channel local experiences with policy implementation into policy-making through peer exchange.  My doctoral dissertation focused on the dynamic interaction between different levels of policy-making and the specific institutional and social mechanisms which make such “feedback loops” possible. I explored these through the concept of reflexivity, which I define as ..read more

Anke Reinhardt International governmental organizations are not, at least not primarily, research organizations. There are exceptions: For example, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) and the Centre for Agriculture and Bioscience International (CABI) were both created to conduct research. But the vast majority of international organizations have other functions: facilitating international cooperation, regulating international access to goods and services, assisting governments in financial crises, to name a few. Nevertheless, some international organizations have established ..read more

Jens Jungblut Several people have argued in recent years that higher education has become a more important policy sector in most if not all countries around the world (see e.g. Busemeyer, Garritzmann, & Neimanns, 2020; Garritzmann, 2016; Gornitzka & Maassen, 2014). An increasing percentage of the global population pursues or attains a tertiary education degree, both private and public spending for higher education is growing, and the relevance of well-trained graduates but also research and innovation for national economic development or the solution of global policy problems such as c ..read more

Inga Ulnicane These days Artificial Intelligence (AI) is high on international political agenda. US President Biden has just issued an executive order on safe, secure and trustworthy AI. G7 leaders have agreed on Guiding Principles and a Code of Conduct on Artificial Intelligence. The UK is hosting the first global AI Safety Summit. However, not everyone is impressed. More than 100 civil society organizations, experts and campaigners in their open letter call the summit ‘a missed opportunity’ and point out that ‘communities and workers most affected by AI have been marginalized by the summit ..read more

Knowledge Politics and Policies Standing Group in Prague The 2023 edition of the General Conference of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) took place in Prague, 4-8 September. The section of our ECPR Standing Group Knowledge Politics and Policies included nine panels on politics and policy of academic mobility and diplomacy, universities, higher and vocational education, research, and Artificial Intelligence. This year our section on Knowledge Politics and Policies took place for the 12th time and was probably one of the biggest sections we have had so far. Our panels were ..read more

Inga Ulnicane EU research policy has experienced tremendous growth in terms of increase in the EU-level competences, funds, initiatives and policy instruments. While today EU research policy is taken for granted, in the early days of European political integration in the 1950s its establishment was far from obvious. Initial treaties did not envisage European level competencies or funds in this area. Major breakthroughs took place during the 1980s when the EU-level competence was established and the Framework Programme was launched to fund research. The growth of EU Framework Programmes (FPs) f ..read more

Andrew Gunn The UK Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) has returned following revisions, but how has it changed? Are we any nearer to solving the wicked problem of measuring university teaching? And why did England, which already has mature quality assurance arrangements, need to introduce the TEF in the first place?   New Framework This September will see universities in England receive new Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) ratings. The TEF is a national scheme designed to assess universities for ‘excellence’ in teaching, learning and student outcomes for undergraduate level education ..read more