Portraits and Landscapes of Academic Community Engagement Scholarship

Abstract

The project will advance the understanding of science-society interactions by focusing on transformative community engagement with Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).

European as well as Italian HE policies appreciate the need for a global reframing of relationships between society, science and innovation which implies inclusive governance to ensure co-responsibility. Public Engagement with Research (PER) is one of the crucial components of increasing efforts aimed to this end. Growing financial and operational support to PER needs a better understanding of science-society dynamics which could lead to more effective research-based policies.

PLACES aims at filling important gaps in the evidence base on how in different higher education systems proactive science-society relationships take place at individual, institutional and systemic level, so to contribute to building effective co-operation between science and society. This objective will be pursued by studying how HEI’s institutional strategies and HE and research policies affect the way transformative PER is approached and practiced. This will be coupled by a parallel investigation stream on how strongly engaged scholars behave, understand, and interact with citizens, and their motives for engaging in science-related activities, through specific reference to their professional biographies and career paths. This leads to two main – yet strongly interconnected – streams of empirical investigation: Portraits and Landscapes. Prominent cases of community engaged scholars in large HEIs of three European countries – Italy, France and UK –  will be examined (Portraits) within the wider institutional and HE policy context in which the most relevant segments of their academic life have taken place (Landscapes).

PLACES will study the different PER policies and connect them to outstanding individual academic careers, so to clarify under which circumstances engaged scholarship is more likely to prosper and function to its full potential for the benefit of all.