This presentation discusses the ways in which researchers develop and perceive collaborative research within cross-national funding schemes. It draws on a study of research grant holders in Social Sciences in England, France, Germany and the Netherlands,  supported through the ORA (Open Research Area) programme, set up in 2009.

The presentation will report on how collaborative research is experienced and conceptualised by grant holders. Whilst examining knowledge claims and forms of collegiality, we direct our attention to the influence of the various contexts on individual action. Our study aimed to gain insights into the interplay of individual positions and broader institutional contexts with epistemic choices and types of sociability that researchers develop within funded, and otherwise incentivised, research programmes.

The presentation will engage with current debates about the extent to which instrumental, behaviour are increasing under current models of research funding and career management, and whether this could be said to be the expense of knowledge and collegiality.

The idea of stimulating collaboration through policy is not a new one and has largely been discussed by the research literature (see Sonnenwald 2007 for a review). In Europe, more or less large scale cooperation programmes have been existing since the 1950s but the launch of the European Research Area (ERA) strategy in 2000 has arguably accelerated this process and extended it in a systematic way to areas of academic research previously less systematically internationalised. It is generally admitted that programmes aiming to enhance mobility and exchanges have in many fields contributed to de-nationalise research concepts and methods. Importantly, studies have also shown how most of these initiatives were actually championed by scientists themselves (Nedeva 2012), for whom collaboration in the form of co-authorship, peer reviewing and academic visits has “always existed as a form of organisation and enquiry” (Papatsiba 2013: 436).  In this context, and within science policy circles, collaboration has been posited as a scientific, social and economic good. Research-funders and policymakers have championed collaborative research on the assumption, or expectation, that it enables to pool resources, to transfer knowledge and technology, to stimulate efficiency, to foster greater internationalisation, while tackling today’s global challenges.

Collaborative enterprises have however divided the academic community and the scholarly debate. For the champions of collaborations, these developments hold up the promise of knowledge generation, within an agenda of social and economic progress.

However, it has been argued that the conceptions and policies of knowledge production of the last two decades have challenged the research governance and practice of universities (Henkel, 2007). Beyond the intrinsic relationship between collaboration and scientific authority, current policy agendas are also seen as having generated different expectations among institutions operating in an increasingly competitive market, and among academics themselves whose careers are increasingly driven by quantifiable indicators of research esteem and impact (Lucas, 2009). Sceptics are alerting to situations of increasing reliance on external agendas and funding, thus undue interference of politics, in which knowledge quality might be sidelined. Equally dangerous would be, they warn, the erosion of professional autonomy, which is essential if academia is to sustain its responsibilities in relation to research, learning and teaching, and this within the framework of disciplines.

In examining collaborations, as forms of inquiry and as social organisations, the presentation will focus on issues of knowledge, individual logics of action, and economies of exchange within academic communities against a context of policies of knowledge production. Rather than concentrating on the outcomes of collaboration, our study offers a micro sociological perspective on the orchestration of collaboration in academic practice.

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