There is, at first glance, nothing striking in the overall governance of the network. As most networks of excellence, PRIME had a Governing Board, An Executive Committee, A Scientific Committee, A Standards and Ethics Group and different Working Groups. It also relied on an Administrative, Financial and Legal Operator, which professionalisation was a central feature in its performance (see specific page). What interests us here is the ways in which these bodies were set and operated, and (...)
Articles les plus récents
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Governance structures in action
21 janvier 2011, par julien -
Daily management : the critical role of a professional operator
21 janvier 2011, par julienOur up-front initial choice was to have a truly professional management team to address all legal, administrative and financial issues. This bears a cost, which is not in proportion with the size of the contract. The EC 7% limit has a completely different meaning with a 15 million euro project and a 6 million one, while, between both, experience has shown that the management activities do not vary very much… Thus, if we wanted to be professional we needed to share. The supporting (...)
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Prime relations with the Commission : 4 central debates
21 janvier 2011, par julienRelations with the Commission are classically separated into scientific and financial.
Beyond classical bilateral exchanges between the Scientific Officer and the coordinator, the scientific relations in our case, were mediated by a central medium – annual monitoring by a 3 persons group. We, as policy analysts and the coordinator as a so-called ‘expert’ in evaluation practices, have heavily questioned this approach, compared to other choices (see for instance the FP6 2004 monitoring report). (...) -
PRIME understanding of integration
21 janvier 2011, par julienIn our initial proposal we constructed an approach towards European integration based upon a distinction between individual and collective excellence, seeing PRIME in terms of helping organised teams, groups, centres or institutes to move up the ladder towards collective excellence. For us the word ‘excellence in research’ is used in connection with maintaining the ability of a field or speciality to permanently renew its concepts and, to achieve this, to nurture what was then called ‘risky’ (...)
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Reflecting upon supporting High risk research
21 janvier 2011, par julienThere have been numerous debates about how to undertake this objective. Should we, once we had recognised enduring challenges, adopt a top-down approach, concentrating funds on these topics and allocating them to those members addressing them ? This was the solution favoured by most policymakers in Brussels (the notion of ‘network of excellence’ having been designed as an alternative to the initial proposed mechanism of ‘centres of excellence’) and quite a few members within the community. The (...)
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Fostering the national development of SPRI capabilities in new member states
21 janvier 2011, par julienInvolving new member states has been an objective set by the EC and one that the reviewers have examined each year. For us, it was a legitimate aim, so early on we undertook a structured effort to characterise existing capacities (see Mac Ceestireo project). The results were decidedly disappointing with the exception of the IKU group at the Corvinius University of Budapest, an important player in the creation and in the existence of the NoE. Essentially we could only find good individuals (...)
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Interactions with stakeholders
21 janvier 2011, par julienACTIVITIES WP6 SA6 Agenda and project building workshops with colleagues outside of Europe
Undertake a review by a professional for defining a dissemination strategy, in particular looking at position papers developed for the Pisa conference and their potential transformation into policy briefs
Reorganisation of the website for the dissemination of academic results, insuring its presence after the end of the (...) -
Organising PRIME research activities : 3 types of support
20 janvier 2011, par julienApart from structural activities, PRIME distinguished itself from a number of NoEs by the fact that it supported research activities. These were, however, of a specific nature, addressing only those issues or areas that were not well covered by existing theories and methods, or supporting heterodox approaches in the ways to conceptualise problems. To do so normally requires bringing together different competences and developing so-called interdisciplinary projects. We labelled this (...)
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About interests and limitations of top-down approaches : the case of the PRIME ERA dynamics initiative
20 janvier 2011, par julienDuring these developments another issue arose about the research agenda itself. It contained no direct interrogation about on-going Europeanisation processes and the de facto dynamics of the ERA. The EC reviewers and the members of the Scientific Committee pushed the Executive Committee to update the agenda and to initiate a proactive development on the issue. This gave rise to a position paper on Europeanisation (January 2006). This served as a platform for discussing in a special plenary (...)
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Assessing the role of PRIME : results from the Characterisation group
20 janvier 2011, par julienIn the monitoring and assessment of PRIME, the Characterisation Group created a novel conceptual framework and constructed a number of indicators to measure changes with regard to the main dimensions of the activities relating to integration and excellence. Important elements of the conceptual framework were published in Science and Public Policy. The framework makes an analytical distinction between ‘integration’ and ‘networking’ or ‘collaboration’, and differentiates between two dimensions, (...)
