A major new effort to present social science’s best evidence-based case for value and impact to British policymakers has been unveiled. In an interview with Social Science Space, the project’s chair discusses how backers hope it influences the public conversation before next year’s general election.
One of the benefits of ostensibly narrow academic pursuits is how their resulting scholarship can inform the work of more widely lauded popularizers and public intellectuals.
Academics in children’s picture books tend to be elderly, old men, who work in science, called Professor SomethingDumb. Michelle Terras argues it matters if children are shown that researchers are male, mad and muddleheaded.
The generation of knowledge by professors. The transformative conversations that happen outside of the classroom. The advancements in our understanding of society. How can you put a value on any of these things?
Anyone under the impression that universities are the dominant suppliers to the United Kingdom government of commissioned research, advice, and knowledge, think again. Open data on government spending shows the relative dominance of other suppliers and mediators of knowledge to government – not least the private sector and think tanks. Simon Bastow presents some preliminary government-wide data.
Jane Tinkler breaks down the key findings from the UK government report on the impact of research council funding over the last year. With income cuts playing a significant role, the number of principal investigators and research fellowships with research council funding have both gone down–even as the remainder’s output has gone up.
A survey of White House advisers from three administrations reveals that what they want from researchers is less options than opinions, and less journal citations than citations by journalists.
While academic social science is extremely effective at generating public value, it is less adept at communicating this value. Sam Baars believes researchers should reflect on the ways in which social value is created not just from the findings of our research, but also the way in which it is conducted. He pushes for the adoption of a more ‘embedded’ approach to research which involves working more closely with the public, and public institutions, at a local level.
“We are, as a species, addicted to story,” says English professor Jonathan Gottschall in his book, The Storytelling Animal. “Even when the […] Tom Burns, whose combination of play — and plays – with teaching in higher education added a light, collaborative and engaging model […] The creation of the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) has led to a heated debate on the balance between peer review and evaluative metrics in research assessment regimes. Luciana Balboa, Elizabeth Gadd, Eva Mendez, Janne Pölönen, Karen Stroobants, Erzsebet Toth Cithra and the CoARA Steering Board address these arguments and state CoARA’s commitment to finding ways in which peer review and bibliometrics can be used together responsibly. “We are, as a species, addicted to story,” says English professor Jonathan Gottschall in his book, The Storytelling Animal. “Even when the […] The interactional skill of large language models enables them to carry out qualitative research interviews at speed and scale. Demonstrating the ability of these new techniques in a range of qualitative enquiries, Friedrich Geiecke and Xavier Jaravel, present a new open source platform to support this new form of qualitative research. Title of course: Space/Power/Species What prompted the idea for the course? A few years ago, I came across the architect Joyce Hwang’s […]
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