Project description
Researching diversity in academia
How is scientific excellence related and positioned to diversity in the European research space? To answer this question, the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) URDER project will bring together science policy studies, cultural sociology, and postcolonial theory to explore how the European academic elites in social sciences and humanities understand the role of diversity in producing excellent science in Europe. The project will study the evaluative cultures among European academic elites. To do so, it focuses on the European Research Council evaluation panels. In line with the necessity of decolonizing knowledge production in the humanities and social sciences in Europe, URDER aims to understand the relations between diversity and excellence and to offer solutions to address diversity in academia.
Objective
The recent intensive sociopolitical debates on racism and the colonialism, which created a wave of protests across the Global North, has broken the ordinariness of the racial status quo endemic to the modern social institutions. In academia, it has enforced a series of initiatives, asking for reconsidering curricula and diversity quotas. The URDER project takes a step back from these societal debates to understand how practices of diversity are understood and applied by those who have a central impact on academic knowledge production and science more generally: the reviewers of academic grants. By studying the evaluation practices of the review panelists of the European Research Commission grant awards, the project will explore how scientific excellence is linked with diversity practices in the European research space. Bringing together (a) science policy studies, (b) cultural sociology, and (c) postcolonial critique, the URDER project seeks to investigate how the European academic elites in social sciences and humanities understand the role of decolonial, anti-racist, and diversity initiatives in European research. The proposed project will allow for training the Fellow in science policy, research management, and research evaluation while the Fellow will offer her valuable knowledge in postcolonial theories, feminist epistemology, and intersectionality. To provide conceptual overlaps between these fields of research will allow for critical assessment of diversity initiatives and propose effective solutions to address diversity in academia.
Fields of science
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-AG-UN - HORIZON Unit GrantCoordinator
1080 Wien
Austria