Home>More Than Euros: Exploring the Construction of Project Grants as Prizes and Consolations
29.03.2022
More Than Euros: Exploring the Construction of Project Grants as Prizes and Consolations
La prochaine séance du séminaire "Enseignement supérieur et recherche" est programmée le 5 avril de 12h30 à 14h, à la fois en présentiel, sur le campus de Sciences Po, 1 place Saint-Thomas d'Aquin 75007, en salle K.027 et en distanciel.
Peter Edlund, chercheur postdoctorant au département des études commerciales de l'université d'Uppsala et actuellement en visitng au CSO, présentera une communication intitulée :
More Than Euros: Exploring the Construction of Project Grants as Prizes and Consolations.
Summary :
The growth of project grants across Europe has implied that scientists experience considerable pressures to seek research funding. Such pressures suggest that scientists would devote most of their attention to the monetary amounts at play through various grants. But, while many scientists struggle to access funding, we also see indications that the allocation of certain grants invokes much more than issues reducible to pecuniary amounts. These indications highlight our need for new knowledge on the ways that scientists attribute meanings to funding and, in doing so, construct the status of grants. Through a comparative, interview-based study, I explore how early-career scientists in Sweden constructed the status of closely related and monetarily identical European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grants (StGs) and Swedish Research Council (SRC) Reserve Grants (RGs). My findings show that scientists ascribed their respective ERC and SRC grants with very different meanings, and that such meanings were specifically attributed on the basis of those evaluations through which StGs and RGs had been acquired. Both grants target top-graded proposals in Europe-level ERC evaluations, but budgetary shortages entail that StGs are distributed to first-ranked applicants, while RGs are allocated to second-ranked applicants. These minimal distinctions did not hinder scientists from constructing ERC StGs as ‘prizes’ and SRC RGs as ‘consolations’ that, respectively, signified successes and failures in elite circles of academia. Such construction persevered even though StGs were perceived as administratively burdensome for research group leaders and economically troublesome for university departments.
