Wider Outlook – Funding, Policy updates and Research

Editorial

Welcome to July’s  Wider Outlook—the team have chosen the theme of  Research Matters and interdisciplinarity for this month’s theme. There is no shortage of encouragement to engage in interdisciplinary research and the need to do this is widely recognised – in order to begin to answer the big research questions –  but how do you make a start and what are the institutional and other barriers? Who does it well – and how could we approach research differently?

Horizon 2020 recognises this too – and has posed research questions around challenges, societal challenges, climate change, health and food security. Explicitly highlighting the multidisciplinary dimensions to these ‘wicked problems’ by including the Social Sciences and Humanities as key collaborators.

We have identified a number of articles related to this topic -and for the first time we have not included funding opportunities in Wider Outlook –  to keep current these are now blogged daily, or sent out to small relevant groups as a bespoke service,

Do continue to use our fantastic Funding Calendar enjoy this edition, and as ever contact us with any comments, ideas or suggestions at  externalprojects@staffs.ac.uk

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RCUK’s plans for 2015-16

Collaboration and efficiencies top RCUK’s 2015-16 plans; Research Councils UK will develop an innovation strategy, improve researcher training and career development and review its support of interdisciplinary research, according to its 2015-16 delivery plan.

The plan, published on 16 June, splits RCUK’s aims into two themes: delivering excellence with impact and enhancing efficiency.

Delivering excellence with impact

To address the first, RCUK says it will produce an innovation strategy that takes into account increasing collaboration and the UK science and innovation strategy, to be delivered in the autumn.

RCUK will also refresh its shared strategic objectives with the Technology Strategy Board, and improve work with partners such as the National Centre for Universities and Business. More interdisciplinary training will be provided for researchers, and RCUK says it will develop more robust evidence on the impact of training on the wider economy, as well as establishing an improved professional development agenda.

In addition to the review of the support of interdisciplinary research, which has been prompted by recommendations in the triennial review of the research councils, RCUK says it will continue working on cross-cutting areas, such as big data.

RCUK also sets out its international collaboration plans, working with government to deliver the £375-million Newton Fund, and helping UK researchers benefit from Horizon 2020.

Enhancing efficiency

On the efficiency side, RCUK confirms its plan to appoint an executive director to improve harmonisation in internal operations and says that it will continue making efficiency savings up to 2016.

At the same time, each research council has published its own delivery plan for 2015-16, which sets out the areas of investment for that time as well as committing to further collaborative working, efficiency savings and improving training for researchers. Most of these plans are continuations of earlier delivery or strategic plans. – See more at:

http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/about/aboutrcuk/deliveryplan/

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Report calls for better inclusion of Social Science and Humanities in H2020

 Horizon 2020 should include more opportunities for interdisciplinary research to ensure that societal challenges and humanities have sufficient space in the programme.

A report by Net4Society group, an advisory group on social and economic sciences funded by the European Commission, found that 37 per cent of the topics in the first Horizon 2020 work programmes include elements of social sciences and humanities. It is important for this work to be properly supported and made more visible in the wider approach to solving the Horizon 2020 societal challenges, the group said.

All Horizon 2020 advisory groups should contain members with a background in social sciences and humanities to ensure that these disciplines are included when projects are implemented, says the report.

When the original proposal for Horizon 2020 was issued in 2012, no provisions had been made for the inclusion of social science and humanities. After prolonged lobbying by social sciences and humanities researchers, the Commission decided to split the programme’s sixth challenge into two, creating a special budget for SSH work.

– See more at:

http://www.net4society.eu/_media/NET4SOCIETY_Opportunities_SSHresearchers_2014_2015_final.pdf

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Academics Anonymous: breaking down barriers between disciplines

Big problems require thinkers who can transcend the traditional boundaries between subjects. In an era where the speed of progress in e.g. biosciences is accelerating, it’s true that specialisation is necessary just to keep up with the data being produced. In fact, a whole new specialism, bioinformatics, has emerged to do just that. But the rebuttal to this is that we desperately need generalists to unify the specialist niches.

The really big problems of climate change, for example, can only be addressed by unifying thought from meteorologists, oceanographers, glaciologists, social scientists, behavioural scientists, political research, economists and so on. Some ideas:

• Hire and judge people on the quality and impact of their research, not on the journal they have published in.

• Anonymise job and grant applications.

• Allow interdisciplinary grants as standard that are reviewed by people from multiple disciplines.

• Provide funding for pump-priming new collaboration attempts and risky “what-if” projects.

• Bring experts from other institutions and industries into universities to provide specialised training to students while allowing academics to guide students in critical thinking and core skills.

• Give students free choice of modules so they can graduate as generalists.

For more see:

http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/may/30/universities-interdisciplinary-research

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Interdisciplinary research is the future at Sussex University

An extract of a recent interview with Michael Farthing vice-chancellor of Sussex University

“Development studies are still very strong in this university, and we are very concerned about the inequalities that could be driven further by climate change, by migration. We now have a medical school, so we’re fully engaged with health issues, not just local but global,” says Farthing. “There is a sense that the things we do here have got to be important, they’ve got to have impact, they’ve got to be relevant to the world outside.”

While some universities are still struggling with the idea of interdisciplinarity, it has been part of Sussex’s make-up from the start, and the return to a flatter, school-based structure will, Farthing believes, help it to flourish. The university’s neuroscience centre, for example, includes specialists in the fields of medicine, psychology, life sciences and informatics and engineering, while the Sackler centre for the study of consciousness science, built on philanthropic donations, brings together, among others, psychiatrists and computer scientists. A new interdisciplinary centre for Middle East studies is in progress.

In 1961, Sussex was a small university, alive with promise and opportunity. Farthing is aware that the expansion has, to some extent, changed the character of the university. But growth, he argues, has enabled the university to increase the breadth and depth of its research and to offer a wider range of courses. He is clear that he doesn’t want to lose “those very distinctive features” of the university, such as its commitment to interdisciplinarity. “Everybody here lives, breathes, eats, sleeps, drinks interdisciplinarity. And that is as alive as it was 50 years ago,” he says.

http://www.theguardian.com/higher-education-network/blog/2014/jun/17/michael-farthing-sussex-university-celebrate-student-protests

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Horizon 2020 – European Parliament input

Much of the credit for Horizon 2020 being simpler and more cohesive than its predecessors can got to the European Parliament, says Fiona Hall MEP.

Research is becoming more complex and interdisciplinary, and companies, institutions and governments are finding it difficult to fund increasingly costly projects. Modern research requires a high level of coordination and cooperation, freedom of movement for talent and ideas, and the ability to leverage large sums of money.

This is the main rationale for having an EU-level research policy. A bloc of 28 countries, representing more than 500 million people and a large resource pool, is well placed to respond to the challenges involved in research and innovation.

EU programmes provide an additional stream of financing to complement national efforts at a time when national budgets are under pressure. According to the UK Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, for example, almost one-fifth of all funding for UK higher education institutions now comes from the EU.

UK researchers are disproportionately successful at obtaining EU funds, having received more than 15 per cent of the total funding from Framework 7 (second only to Germany) and been involved in more projects than any other country. But in general, across member states, money from Framework 7 has helped to bridge the funding gap and enable many projects and international collaborations that would otherwise not have happened.

For full article see:

https://www.researchprofessional.com/0/rr/news/europe/views-of-europe/2014/5/Horizon-2020-shows-MEPs-at-their-most-effective.html

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Ethics in Horizon 2020

Ethics research must be conducted in all parts of Horizon 2020 to ensure research and innovation is undertaken responsibly, according to the League of European Research Universities (Leru).

Leru states that the intention to solve societal challenges under Horizon 2020, such as health and food production, relies on assumptions about human values that must incorporate ethics. Ethics research can help to address questions such as what makes a good society, and how responsible governments and businesses should behave. According to Leru, ethics should play a central role in Horizon 2020 research. This could include improving research design to incorporate ethical issues at an early stage, as well as using ethics research to ensure scientific research is trusted and accepted by the public. It will also be important to ensure ethics is incorporated in conjunction with other disciplines, rather than remaining isolated within the programme, says Leru. The paper, published on 25 April, was written by ethics scientists to continue Leru’s efforts to ensure the social sciences and humanities are fully incorporated within Horizon 2020.

In previous framework programmes, ethics research was incorporated at too late a stage in research projects, which meant it was mostly used to formulate constraints on scientific developments or assess problems with public acceptance, says the position paper.

http://www.leru.org/index.php/public/news/leru-publishes-an-agenda-for-ethics-research-in-horizon-2020/