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

Photo credit: South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO) Anna-Lena Rüland, Nicolas Rüffin, Katharina Cramer, Prosper Ngabonziza, Manoj Saxena, Stefan Skupien Science diplomacy, broadly defined as all activities at the intersection of science policy and international relations, has become somewhat of a buzzword during the last 10 years. Initially coined and put on the international agenda by prominent US-American policymakers and institutions, it has by now gained popularity across the globe and made its way into the scholarly discourse. Yet, so far, much of the literature on the topic ..read more

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