Research on Research: the research function and mission of higher education

Lingxuan Chen is a Clarendon Scholar and is currently studying for a DPhil in Education at the University of Oxford. Her thesis focuses on the endogenisation of China’s social science research and the underpinning power dynamics. Her doctoral research is fully funded by the Clarendon Fund Scholarship. Lingxuan worked as a Research Assistant on the Centre for Global Higher Education ‘Research on Research’ project. She has a strong interest in China’s social science research, global epistemic justice, international relations and politics, and knowledge-power nexus.

Dr Soyoung Lee was a research assistant on Project 3 and a member of Global Higher Education research group. She holds a DPhil from the University of Oxford and a master’s degree from the University of Cambridge. Soyoung’s research interests involve international students, student agency and student self-formation in higher education.

McQueen Sum is currently reading for a DPhil in Education at the University of Oxford. She is supervised by Professor Alis Oancea and Dr Victoria Elliott. McQueen is a member of the Centre for Global Higher Education interested in higher education, teaching, teachers’ work, and technology. Her research interests are influenced by her prior experiences of working as an academic tutor at the University of Hong Kong and a researcher for Khan Academy and HarvardX (edX).

Szilvi Watson is a final-year DPhil student at the University of Oxford’s Department of Education. She was a doctoral research assistant in the Centre for Global Higher Education on the Research on Research and the Responsible KEEI projects. Her doctoral research pertains to the experiences of religious postgraduate students at universities in England. Previously Szilvi was senior project manager of a world-wide science and religion project at Oxford University’s Materials Department. She is a qualified teacher with extensive experience in varied educational settings and has an interest in higher education research.

Benjamin Hart was a research assistant on Project 3 while also a doctoral student in the Department of Education conducting research in the field of English Higher Education. His research focusses on evaluation within a widening participation setting and his interests lie primarily in the field of higher education and the philosophy of education. Following his B.A., and MSc in Sociology, Benjamin completed his MSc Education (Research Design and Methodology) at the University of Oxford. Prior to his Doctoral studies, Benjamin worked in Evaluation at the University of Oxford.

Dr Maria Rucsandra Stan is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Università degli Studi Milano-Bicocca, Italy. In 2022 she was a visiting doctoral researcher on CGHE Project 3, ‘Research on Research: the research function and mission of higher education’ under the supervision of Professor Alis Oancea. Rucsandra was also part of a PRIN project (Carlo Cattaneo University local unit), on “The effects of evaluation on academic research: knowledge production and methodological issues’”. Her doctoral research focused on the effects of the evaluation system on knowledge production and researchers in academia and research institutions.

Dr Hoonhui Cho was a visiting researcher in the ESRD/RE Centre for Global Higher Education at the University of Oxford in 2023, and is a senior official of the Ministry of Education in the Republic of Korea. He has been working as an educational policy practitioner since 2004 in the South Korean government. In the meantime, Hoonhui finished his doctoral thesis on the Korean state and its approaches to policy making in higher education at the University of Oxford in 2014. His research interests includes higher education governance and policy, research assessment and comparative higher education.

Bruno Mallett worked as an intern on this project in May 2022. Bruno is an emerging educational researcher who is developing specialisms in higher education, global educational governance and education philosophy. He is currently working on a research project which investigates the ways in which numeracy and literacy requirements are assessed on initial teacher training programs in England following reforms to the prior QTS Professional Skills Tests model in 2019.

Dr Siri Brorstad Borlaug is a senior researcher at NIFU (Nordic institute for studies in innovation, research and education). She studies the effects of funding and governance in research policy and research institutions on researchers and research. Her interests also include the role of societal stakeholders in research and how researchers engage in society.

Jonathan Boston, ONZM, is Professor of Public Policy in the School of Government at Victoria University of Wellington (VUW). His research interests include climate change, child poverty, governance, public management, research funding, and welfare state design. He has served at various times as Director of the Institute of Policy Studies and Director of the Institute for Governance and Policy Studies at VUW. In the early 2000’s he was a member of the Tertiary Education Advisory Committee and helped design and implement the Performance-Based Research Fund in New Zealand’s tertiary education sector.

Elizabeth (Lizzie) Gadd is Head of Research Operations at the University of Glasgow and a Research Policy Manager at Loughborough University. She chairs the International Network of Research Management Societies (INORMS) Research Evaluation Group, the Association of Research Managers and Administrators (ARMA) Research Evaluation Special Interest Group and the LIS-Bibliometrics Forum. She founded The Bibliomagician Blog which provides bibliometric advice and guidance ‘by practitioners, for practitioners’. Elizabeth was the recipient of the 2020 INORMS Award for Excellence in Research Management Leadership.

Steven Hill is Director of Research at Research England. Steven was formerly Head of Research Policy at the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), and leads on all aspects of research policy and funding. Steven is responsible for research funding, including quality-related funding (QR), general capital funding and the UK Research Partnership Investment Fund (UKRPIF). He also leads Research England’s research assessment and policy work, and is the chair of the steering group for the 2021 Research Excellence Framework (REF).

As a research and programme management professional, Dr. Phyllis Kalele heads the African Collaboration sub-programme at the Academy of Science of South Africa. She directs strategic academy projects in Africa with the aim of bolstering science diplomacy, promoting the use of evidence-based science in policy making and increasing the visibility of African scientists. Dr. Kalele also leads gender in science initiatives at the academy and from 2019 to 2020 she was the Africa Regional Focal Point Coordinator for Gender in Science, Innovation, Technology and Engineering (GenderInSITE), a global, multi-sectoral, multi-stakeholder initiative to promote the role of women in SITE. She holds a BSc. in Botany and Zoology, a MSc. in Environmental Sciences and a PhD. in Science and Technology Studies.

Vincent Larivière holds the Canada Research Chair on the Transformations of Scholarly Communication at the Université de Montréal, where he is professor of information science and associate vice-president (planning and communications). He is also scientific director of the Érudit journal platform, associate scientific director of the Observatoire des sciences et des technologies (OST) and regular member of the Centre interuniversitaire de recherche sur la science et la technologie (CIRST). His research focuses on science policy, scholarly publishing, and diversity and equity in science.

Cameron Neylon is Professor of Research Communication at the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University where he is co-lead on the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative. He is interested in how to make the internet more effective as a tool for scholarship. He writes and speaks regularly on scholarly communication, the design of web based tools for research, and the need for policy and cultural change within and around the research community.

Heidi Prozesky is an associate professor at the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology, located at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. She holds a PhD in Science and Technology Studies and a master’s degree in social science methods. As a sociologist of science, Heidi employs both quantitative and qualitative strategies to investigate her main research interests, namely women in science and early-career researchers in (South) Africa, in particular their research productivity.

Emanuela Reale is Director of the Research Institute on Sustainable Economic Growth IRCRES CNR. Her main areas of interest are higher education policy, governance, R&D funding, STI indicators, research evaluation and impact assessment -with a special focus on SSH research. Currently she is PI in the RISIS project Research Infrastructure for science and innovation studies, and coordinator of the PRIN project on effects of evaluation on universities research. She is Member of the Board of the Consortium of Higher Education Researchers CHER, of the European Network of Indicator designer ENID, and President of the European Forum for Research and Innovation-EU-SPRI.

Leandro Rodriguez Medina (PhD Cambridge) is Professor at the Department of International Relations and Political Science, Universidad de las Americas Puebla (Mexico). He is a member of the National System of Researchers (Level 2) at the Mexican Council for Science and Technology (CONACYT) and founding Editor-in-Chief of Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society. He has held visiting positions at Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana (Mexico), Albert Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg (Germany) and Université Sorbonne Nouvelle-Paris III and Université Descartes-Paris V (France). His research interests are Latin American STS, international circulation of academic knowledge, social aspects of diseases (zika and covid-19), and the relationship between culture and city in Mexico. Recent publications include Migrants, parasites et exploitation minière: coproduction de problèmes publics et de connaissances scientifiques dans la périphérie (2021, Revue d’anthropologie des connaissances), Cultural practices and rough sociality in Mexico’s midsize cities: Tijuana, Puebla and Monterrey (2021, Urban Studies), De la posverdad al populismo epistémico: una visión CTS (2021, Revista Mexicana de Ciencias Políticas y Sociales), Personal bonds in the internationalization of the social sciences: a view from the periphery (2021, International Sociology), Who’s Afraid of Ebola? Epidemic Fires and Locative Fears in the Information Age (2020, Social Studies of Science), and International Ties at Peripheral Sites: Co-producing Social Processes and Scientific Knowledge in Latin America (2019, Science as Culture), among others.