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Climate, energy, mobility and consumer policy are increasingly seen as interdependent policy fields. At least since the World Economic Forum in 2011 the “nexus” between policy fields is perceived as a central societal challenge. At the “nexus” between policy fields, actors are confronted with complex knowledge and coordination problems. For some years now, we can, however, observe new formats of joint cross-policy-field knowledge production and coordination, for instance participatory foresight procedures, interactive policy assessments, multistakeholder initiatives, and transdisciplinary platforms. These are designed to produce knowledge that is deemed both scientifically valid and politically useful in terms of coping with nexus challenges.

Research problem and questions

Abstract

The research project will examine some important key elements of the new governance of science. Part of this is an analysis of performance-based funding (PBF) procedures and their effects, the analysis of actors’ strategies to act following the introduction of PBF systems, the location of PBF within specific governance arrangements on the micro- and meso level, the theoretical integration of the empirical findings, and the creation of practically applicable knowledge for the (re)design of PBF procedures.

Over the last 30 years, social scientists have continuously seen the legitimacy of basic research contested, including its funding modes and organisation. This questioning is due to purported changes in knowledge production as well as to the various social pressures on science to prove its social and economic benefits. If the legitimacy of basic research is under attack, then why and how can new forms of basic research funding arise and stabilise? In other words: How can science and politics come to an understanding for establishing and sustaining the institutional legitimacy of basic research? In this dissertation, this question will be answered by reconstructing a policy process, which has led to a new research funding organisation: the European Research Council (ERC).

This research project analyses processes of value attribution/valorisation in socio-algorithmic networks, using two case studies:

The first case study focuses on valorisation dynamics of APIs (application programming interfaces). One specific empirical example examined is Google’s translation service (Google Translate) and the associated Google Translate API.

The second case study analyses processes of valorisation around Internet bots in social media. A specific empirical example focuses on translation-related processes in Wikipedia.
 

Since the 1990s there has been an increase in knowledge produced in the health sciences about the health and illness of migrants, particularly regarding communicable infectious diseases. The epidemiological categories and classifications which serve to generate this knowledge are changing. The aim of this three (3) year research project is a comparison of discursive epidemiological practices in Great Britain and Germany with regard to two infectious diseases, HIV/Aids and tuberculosis.