Professor Alis Oancea

In recent years, she was Director of Research in the Department of Education and REF2021 coordinator for the unit. Through scholarly and professional collaborations, she hopes to champion knowledge, justice, generosity and integrity in research practices and discourses, research policy and research leadership and cultures in different types of organisation. She has led and collaborated on research projects, change and development initiatives, and administrative processes on impact and knowledge exchange, and held advisory and leadership roles in education reform and research assessment. She has conducted research on research ecosystems, values in research, open knowledge, impact, ethics and integrity, epistemic diversity, research careers, understandings of quality and excellence, research assessment, research in teacher education, philosophy of research, and responsible research and engagement. Contributions to the integration and development of the field of meta-research include the collaborative production of the Handbook of Meta-Research (2024).

Funded work includes studies of interpretations and practices of research quality and ‘excellence’  and of research impact in the full range of disciplines; responsible knowledge exchange, impact and engagement; comparative analyses of principles, strategies and mechanisms for research assessment internationally; the impacts of successive RAEs on institutional, departmental and individual academic behaviours; interpretations of cultural value from arts and humanities research (AHRC); reviews of the current state of, and future prospects for, education research (including the BERA Observatory and the BA/RS landscape review); quality and ethics in applied and practice-based research; research cultures; the roles of the social sciences within innovation ecosystems.  She is interested in research on higher education, contemporary challenges for philosophy of education and research, and science and technology studies.