Towards a European Research Arena - How to achieve European Added Value in Transnational and Interdisciplinary Socio-Economic Research. Lessons Learned from the 4th and 5th FRP Projects.

The European Commission funds European research through its Framework Programmes. The most recent of these, the 4th and 5th Programmes, have both included distinct social science programmes. An overall objective of the 4th and 5th programmes as a whole was the creation of what was termed 'European added value' through European researchers working together in transnational and interdisciplinary teams, focusing on policy relevant research. In broader terms, the European Commission set the challenge of creating a distinctive European dimension within socio-economic research. Such European research should be able to deal with the increasing Europeanisation of socio-economic reality and the possible emergence of a distinctive European society. Furthermore, such research would contribute to a truly European research policy, addressing the challenges that the diverse countries face jointly and overcoming the mere juxtaposition of national programmes.

Despite the prominence given to it, there is however no clear definition of the distinctive features of European socio-economic research in official documents. Even more importantly, little is known about what has actually happened within the research projects in terms of this objective. We do not know how the call for a 'European Dimension' has actually been interpreted by researchers and we certainly do not know how such interpretations have actually been implemented in practice. More precisely, the Commission has called for research to be transnational, interdisciplinary and applied. We know nothing about how these exhortations have been interpreted and implemented by the researchers themselves.

Towards a European Research Arena - How to achieve European Added Value in Transnational and Interdisciplinary Socio-Economic Research. Lessons Learned from the 4th and 5th FRP Projects is a project under the Accompanying Measures Programme. Its main objective is to document the experiences of researchers who were/are engaged in European funded research. The project seeks therefore to evaluate and exploit the rich research experience accumulated since 1994 with the aim of shedding light on the distinctive characters of the European socio-economic research. The project is expected to provide future applicants and evaluators with a report of what has been achieved as well as concrete suggestions for future potentially valuable socio-economic research.

The project has begun by compiling a database of all research projects funded within the socio-economic programmes of the 4th and 5th Framework Programmes (respectively the Targeted Socio-Economic Research programme and the Improving Human Potential programme). This has already been used for a statistical overview of EU social research and is the basis for ongoing work on the national and thematic composition of EU research teams.

The core of the project is a series of 'group discussions'. For these, a sample of projects has been drawn from the project database. The co-ordinators of these projects are divided into six small groups. Each of these groups participates in a day long discussion, moderated by a member of the research team, about their theoretical and practical experience of the 'European dimension' within their own research project. In addition, all project co-ordinators within the two programmes are being asked to complete a questionnaire about their experiences.

Data from the group discussions and the questionnaire are then analysed for a series of thematic reports covering the different aspects of the 'European dimension': transnationality, interdisciplinarity and applied research. These reports then form the basis of workshops where they are discussed with a small number of high profile European socio-economic researchers. These researchers form an 'expert pool' which is used to validate the results of the project.

Further information about the 6 other teams involved with this project are available by clicking on the links.

Prof. Michael Kuhn and Dr. Doris Weidemann, University of Bremen, BFER (coordinator)
Website: www.eu-dimension.uni-bremen.de

Prof. Aaron Benavot, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Website: www.huji.ac.il

Dr Svend Otto Remoe, STEP, Oslo
Website: www.step.no

Prof. Sabine Erbes-Seguin, IRESCO, Paris
Website: www.iresco.fr

Dr Massimo Tomassini, ISFOL, Rome
Website: www.isfol.it

The following is available for download from this website:

Wickham, J. and Greco, L. (2002) EU funded social science research projects: a preliminary statistical analysis (PDF, EU Research Statistical Analysis.pdf, 422KB)

For further information on a specific researcher, please click on the appropriate link.