Conceptions and expectations of research collaboration in the European social sciences: Research policies, institutional contexts and the autonomy of the scientific field

Lebeau, Yann ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0304-3260 and Papatsiba, Vassiliki (2016) Conceptions and expectations of research collaboration in the European social sciences: Research policies, institutional contexts and the autonomy of the scientific field. European Educational Research Journal, 15 (4). pp. 377-394. ISSN 1474-9041

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Abstract

This paper investigates the interactions between policy drivers and academic practice in international research collaboration. It draws on the case of the Open Research Area (ORA), a funding scheme in the social sciences across four national research agencies, seeking to boost collaboration by supporting “integrated” projects. The paper discusses the scheme’s governance and its place within the European policy space before turning to awarded researchers’ perceptions of its originality and impact on their project’s emergence and development. Drawing on Bourdieu’s field theory, we analyse the scheme’s capacity to challenge researchers’ habitual collaborative practice as well as the hierarchical foundations of the social science field. We relate the discourses of researchers, located in France, Germany, The Netherlands and the United Kingdom, to such structural dimensions of the academic profession as, disciplinary cultures, institutional environments and national performance management of research careers. The paper argues that the ORA introduced novel mechanisms of power sharing and answerability in social sciences research capable of unsettling the autonomy of the scientific field. This analysis offers a new perspective on the often unquestioned superiority of the model of international collaboration induced by schemes such as the ORA.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	research collaboration, open research area (ora),european research policy,scientific field,higher education
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > School of Education and Lifelong Learning
UEA Research Groups:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Research Groups > Research in Higher Education and Society
Depositing User:	Pure Connector
Date Deposited:	21 Apr 2016 14:00
Last Modified:	22 Oct 2022 00:53
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/58330
DOI:	10.1177/1474904116642777

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