What is research culture? Interpreting and governing research culture in the UK Higher Education
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The emphasis on research culture is emerging as a significant trend in research assessment both in the UK and internationally. Yet, the meaning of research culture is often undetermined and strategically ambiguous. This presentation will unpack these ambiguities by mobilising insights from frame theory in social and political sciences in order to identify the key meanings of research culture across governance levels and disciplinary communities. The presentation will pay particular attention to competing and contradictory frames around research culture and their underpinning assumptions about the nature of research and academic institutions. Drawing on a rich dataset of focus groups, interviews, and document analysis of key policy documents at the UK and EU levels, this presentation will unpack the process of ‘meaning-making in action’ around research culture. By doing so, this presentation will provide insights into the operationalisation of research culture as an auditable object and its institutionalisation across the higher education system. Thus, this project will contribute to the ongoing debates in global higher education by exploring the emergence and consolidation of collective frames around new policy concepts and their performative effects.
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Justyna Bandola-Gill is an Assistant Professor in Social Policy at the University of Birmingham where she leads the Science, Technology and Culture research cluster. She is a research-on-research scholar working at the intersection of science policy and research evaluation. Her areas of interest are research impact, research culture, and measurement and evaluation of academic work. Justyna is particularly interested in transformative change—how and why institutions, cultures, and ideas evolve over time and the types of epistemic infrastructures that underpin and embed these changes. She has extensively published on these topics in the context of the impact agenda, science-policy interactions and metrics. She is currently leading a project on the emergence of research culture as a governable object in UK higher education. Justyna is passionate about sustainable research and teaching practices and is Head of Sustainability at the School of Social Policy and Society at the University of Birmingham.
