37
INTRO | HIGHLIGHTS | FEATURES | FOCUS | PERSPECTIVES | BIOS
Campaigns for funding science in the UK
are becoming increasingly innovative
and strategic in their approach, says
MATTHEW KEARNES
In recent years the scientific establishment
has been through something of a theological
moment. With the combined effects of
continuing public disquiet about the trajectory
of technological change and a policy context
that has increasingly emphasised strategic
investments in research, scientists and
scientific organisations have begun, perhaps
like never before, to publicly defend the
benefits of fundamental research and
‘basic science’.
In recent months these efforts have crystallised
in a series of high-profile and effective
campaigns to promote the vitality of science
to the future economic prosperity of the UK.
Responding to similar concerns, UK researchfunding bodies have launched a series of
strategic and cross-disciplinary research
programmes. Covering areas of research as
diverse as environmental change, energy
and lifelong health, these initiatives
encapsulate a new argument about the value
of research in the UK; that interdisciplinary
and collaborative research can, through
careful programme design, be brought to
bear on the ‘grand challenges’ of the day.
But these initiatives represent a challenge
for social scientists and the broader
relationship between science and society.
They focus attention on the ways in which
these grand societal challenges are defined
and framed and the kinds of collaborative
roles that social scientists are increasingly
taking in interdisciplinary research teams.
Will this strategic approach, that seeks
to encourage research on cross-cutting
challenges, be framed solely in technical
terms, as requiring scientific rather than
social innovations? Will this approach
represent an opportunity to open up innovation
processes to a wider array of disciplinary
perspectives and diverse viewpoints?
Against this backdrop, the results of a recently
completed ESRC-funded project entitled:
‘Strategic Science: Research Intermediaries
and the Governance of Innovation’, show the
gravity of this challenge.
Focusing on the development of research
programmes in nanotechnology and synthetic
biology, the results of the project reveal that
while research councils and other funding
agencies are increasingly taking an active
role in shaping new research programmes –
by delineating key research terms, building
agendas and working to establish a core
research community in emerging fields – a set
of underlying policy narratives about the power
of science to produce social progress continues
to shape institutional practice.
The results of this research suggest that this
‘definitional work’, though often couched in
technical terms, typically involves questions of
fundamental societal significance. For example,
the emerging field of synthetic biology is
increasingly defined as the rational design of
‘biologically-based parts’, ‘novel devices