History and Past Activities
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History and Past Activities |
Chris Caswill
Director of Research, Economic & Social Research Council (ESRC)
Polaris House
North Star Avenue
Swindon SN2 1UJTel: 01793-413008
Fax: 01793-413005
e- mail: Chris.Caswill@esrc.ac.uk
Technologies and Research Agendas within the Virtual Research Council
Research Councils in democratic Nation States seek to identify priorities and influence the directions of research — setting the research agenda. This paper will discuss how this core agenda-setting process is likely to be altered by the large-scale adoption by Research Councils of new ICTs. In a forthcoming paper I have called this the move to the "Virtual Research Council". The assumption is made that currently available leading edge ICTs all work and (more optimistically) interconnect. The paper will then focus on the use of these new technologies by the VRC for agenda setting. This will include changed relations with the VRC's "principals", namely the sponsoring Science Ministries. Equally importantly, the new technologies will reshape the VRC's relations with researchers and universities, and with the wider publics of research users. VRC's will have the chance to build new more democratic and powerful relations with wider publics, through the use of web and videoconference technology. Specifically, the paper will look at the potential for electronic user and beneficiary (citizens') juries to improve and give democratic legitimacy to VRC research agendas. It will also discuss the associated development of new electronic interactions with Ministries and researchers. In doing so, it will seek to advance the application of principal-agent theory to science policy and raise some questions about the utility of actor-network theory.
Sociology of Science and Technology NETwork - last update: April 2006