CGHE Webinar 139

WEBINAR PANEL — Global research in the Covid-19 pandemic

Date: Thursday, 18 June 2020 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm

Location: Zoom webinar

Speaker(s):

Gemma Derrick, The University of Bristol
Xin Xu, University of Oxford
Alis Oancea, University of Oxford
Giovanni Colavizza, University of Amsterdam

View Giovanni Colavizza’s presentation slides

View Gemma Derrick’s presentation slides

View Xin Xu’s presentation slides

View the chat function transcript

Science and research are crucial to tackling the COVID-19 crisis. The world is witnessing a fast-growing body of research on COVID-19. Scientific evidence is constantly shaping governmental policies and public opinions. International organisations, reputable scientific journals, and funding bodies have been calling researchers around the world to collaborate and cooperate in an open manner. But meanwhile, the research communities are under substantial pressure during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a result of structural, cultural, geopolitical, and disciplinary challenges.

The webinar addresses two critical areas around global research and the COVID-19 pandemic:
(1) The global research on Covid-19: How are global research communities contributing to revolving the COVID-19 pandemic? Are we witnessing a growth in international collaboration or competition? What are the roles of humanities and social sciences research? How are the research community engaging with the policy and the public?

(2) Influences of Covid-19 on global research: What are the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on academic life and research culture? Are we witnessing a change in the research culture with more openness, kindness, inclusivity, and sustainability? Or is the globalisation of research entering a more challenging time?

The webinar brings together a panel of leading international experts on higher education and research, from UK/Europe/East Asia, zones in which the pandemic is equally transformative but has played out very differently in society and in higher education – and a participant audience from across the world.

Gemma Derrick

Gemma Derrick is Associate Professor (Research Policy & Culture) at The University of Bristol and a CGHE Co-Investigator on CGHE Project 3, ‘Research on Research: the research function and mission of higher education’.

Dr Xin Xu

Xin Xu (许心) is a Departmental Lecturer in Higher/Tertiary Education at the University of Oxford. Her research concentrates on higher/tertiary education and research.

Professor Alis Oancea

Alis is Professor of Philosophy of Education and Research Policy at the University of Oxford and Project Lead (Research on Research) at the ESRC Centre for Global Higher Education, as well as Social Sciences Division Advocate for Impact (Responsible Engagement and Innovation). In recent years, she was Director of Research in the Oxford University Department of Education and REF2021 coordinator for the unit. Through scholarly and professional collaborations, she hopes to champion knowledge, justice, generosity and integrity in research practices and discourses, research policy and research leadership and cultures in different types of organisation. She has led and collaborated on research projects, change and development initiatives, and administrative processes on impact and knowledge exchange, and held advisory and leadership roles in education reform and research assessment. She has conducted research on research ecosystems, values in research, open knowledge, impact, ethics and integrity, epistemic diversity, research careers, understandings of quality and excellence, research assessment, research in teacher education, philosophy of research, and principled research practice. Alis is the joint editor of the Oxford Review of Education, chief editorial advisor on Routledge Open Research (Education), and co-editor of the forthcoming ‘Handbook of Meta-Research’ (Elgar). Alis Oancea led CGHE Project 3, ‘Research on Research: the research function and mission of higher education’.

Giovanni Colavizza, University of Amsterdam

Giovanni is Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities at the University of Amsterdam and a Visiting Researcher at The Alan Turing Institute, where he was a Co-investigator on the Living with Machines project and convenes the AI for Arts special interest group. He did his PhD at the Digital Humanities Laboratory of the EPFL in Lausanne, working on methods for text mining and citation analysis of scholarly publications, and is co-founder of Odoma, a start-up offering customised machine learning techniques in the cultural heritage domain. Giovanni is primarily working on AI for cultural heritage and on the public understanding of science. Prior to joining the Turing, Giovanni has been a researcher at Leiden University (CWTS), the Leibniz Institute of European History in Mainz, and the University of Oxford. He studied computer science (BSc) and history (BA, MA) in Udine, Milan, Padua and Venice in Italy.