How do researchers balance competing goals within an increasingly challenging geopolitical landscape? The production of scientific knowledge is expected to solve complex societal issues such as climate change, health challenges, and social inequality. Achieving these objectives requires collaboration across disciplines, institutions, countries, and continents. Consequently, the societal impact of research has become a prerequisite for both funders and political authorities.
User participation in research has shifted from rhetoric to reality. Open access to knowledge outputs and the sharing of research data are now integral components of the new research policy regime. However, political discourses in many countries are also characterized by anti-scientific and anti-democratic sentiments. These trends are accompanied by significant cuts in university budgets and the weakening of individual researchers and research groups autonomy to determine the content of teaching and research. Simultaneously, rising geopolitical tensions have led to security measures and legislation for research cooperation between countries, contributing to the exclusion of researchers from certain nations.
Within the framework of such developments, scientific knowledge production is characterized by demanding and contradictory expectations - which can have great significance for funding and recruitment to research, organization and evaluation of scientific knowledge production, scientific results- and hence, their social impact. In this context, the production of scientific knowledge is marked by conflicting and demanding expectations, which can significantly influence funding, recruitment, organization, and evaluation of research efforts, as well as the eventual societal impact of scientific results.
The seminar brings together researchers with an interest in research organization, evaluation and impact of science, including researchers from the projects, Responsible Internationalization, Inclusion, and National Security in Norwegian Research Organizations in a Changing Geopolitical Landscape (OsloMet) and New ways of evaluating research and researchers; CoARA in the Norwegian research system (NIFU). We further invite researchers and PhD students from Norway and France with an interest in science and society to present analyses from their research projects.
Organizers: Silje Maria Tellmann (Center for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo) and Agnete Vabø (Oslo Business School, OsloMet),
French contributors: Liliana Doganova (Center for the Sociology of Innovation, CSI), Stephanie G. Mignot (Paris-Est Créteil University)