Final Report Summary - EQUIP (EU-India Platform for the Social Sciences and Humanities)
Executive Summary:
What is EqUIP?
The Europe-India Platform for the Social Science and Humanities (EqUIP), is a network of research funding and support organisations from Europe and India. It was established in 2014 to strengthen research collaboration in the social sciences and humanities (SSH). To date it has brought together 20 organisations from 15 European countries and India to develop stronger relationships between research funders and between researchers.
Background
In an increasingly interlinked world, global perspectives are needed to tackle global challenges, many of which are fundamentally human in nature. Social science and humanities research perspectives need to be at the centre of approaches to tackling them. India is rapidly growing into one of the world’s leading research nations, but the extent of collaboration with European researchers in the social sciences and humanities is well behind science and technology. EqUIP has built on the experiences of other European networks of research funders. These networks have started and supported international collaboration by removing administrative barriers to researchers working together internationally, and pooling national resources to fund research on issues of international importance.
EqUIP Activities
EqUIP has supported research funding agencies across Europe and India to understand the opportunities and challenges for greater collaboration. It strengthens their relationships by increasing their understanding of each other’s systems and processes, working cultures and by sharing best practice. EqUIP has built trust and good relationships, by organising staff exchange schemes across eight countries and a workshop to develop a joint vision for future collaboration. EqUIP partners have also agreed priority issues that would benefit from the expertise of excellent Indian and European researchers. This prioritisation has been developed through an academic expert group and a series of six expert workshops on: inequalities, growth and place/apace; digital archives and databases as a source of mutual knowledge; sustainable prosperity, wellbeing and innovation; social transformations, cultural expressions, cross-cultural connections and dialogue; power structures, conflict resolution and social justice. These workshops have also created new networks of researchers in specialist areas.
Main Findings and Results
Through these activities EqUIP has become an important source of information for the people who decide how funding is spent on national research, both those engaged in EqUIP and beyond, which will help inform and shape initiatives to foster collaboration between researchers in India and Europe on issues of common international importance. It has highlighted the significant growth in Europe-India collaboration in the social sciences, and to a lesser extent in the arts and humanities, over the last 10 years, particularly supported by increased investment in Indian social science and a number of past European Union and collaborative national networking schemes. EqUIP has expanded to include more Indian and European funders. It has built new relationships between organisations which will increase opportunities for those organisations to join joint initiatives. A Summary Report captures what partners have learned and reflects on the future of the network.
EqUIP has the potential to enable Indian and European researchers to work together with fewer administrative barriers on issues of international importance. It also offers the potential for their findings to have international impact. EqUIP has laid the groundwork for the network’s first joint call for applications for funding from groups of academics from a number of countries who wish to work together. This was pre-announced at showcasing events in Delhi and Brussels and to be launched in Autumn 2017.
Project Context and Objectives:
This section will provide an introduction to the Europe-India Platform for the Social Science and Humanities (EqUIP), the background to its development and its key aims and objectives. In doing so it also provides an introduction to the wider context of EU-India collaboration to which EqUIP contributes.
The Europe-India Platform for the Social Science and Humanities (EqUIP) is a network of European and Indian organisations that fund and support research. It was established in 2014 with a €1.5 million grant from the European Union (Grant No. 613236) to strengthen research collaboration in the social sciences and humanities (SSH). Since then, it has brought together 20 national organisations from 15 European countries and India to develop stronger strategic partnerships.
By bringing together these organisations, EqUIP builds on a breadth of experience from successful European partner relationships (the NORFACE and HERA European Research Area Networks) to bear in the further development of links with India. EqUIP supports research funding agencies across Europe and India in building these links by enabling them to share best practice, setting up networking opportunities and the development of a strategic research agenda. The network has used these activities to work towards the development of a joint funding initiative.
EqUIP is coordinated by the Economic and Social Research Council based in the UK, in close collaboration with the Indian Council of Social Science Research. The partner organisations that were beneficiaries of the EU grant were:
• UK - Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
• India - Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR)
• Finland - Academy of Finland (AKA)
• France - French National Research Agency (ANR)
• Italy - Agency for the Promotion of European Research (APRE)
• Germany - German Research Foundation (DFG) and DLR Project Management Agency (DLR)
• Portugal - Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT)
• Slovenia - Ministry of Education, Science and Sports (MIZS)
• Netherlands - Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)
• Norway - Research Council of Norway (RCN)
• Austria - Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI)
Since its launch, EqUIP events have helped to initiate relationships with the Indian Council for Historical Research, the Indian Council of Philosophical Research, the University Grants Commission, the India Foundation for the Arts and other Indian research funding and support organisations. European membership of EqUIP has also increased to include the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Polish National Research Centre and relationships with Irish, Swiss and Swedish organisations.
Background to EqUIP
In an increasingly interlinked world where a crisis in one country can very quickly become a crisis everywhere, we need to work together to sort out global problems. But this also means understanding local differences and knowing that a solution in Milan might not work in Mumbai. Technology alone is rarely the solution to these challenges; many of which are fundamentally about human nature - they are about the way we behave. Social science and humanities research can tackle such problems by asking the right questions and offering powerful perspectives
India has a long tradition of scientific and technological endeavours, and has been recognised by the European Union as an increasingly important research collaboration partner. In 2013, 4.4 % of the world’s scholarly output – 106,065 papers – came from India, and the trend is accelerating. India’s research output is far outpacing the world average, increasing by 14 % compared to a world average of 4 %.
This growth was evident when Indian researchers participated in the European Union Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development. This is the EU's main way of funding research in Europe. There were seven Framework Programmes which funded research until 2013 after which it was then renamed Horizon 2020. After the Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement (STCA) between India and the EU in 2001, India’s participation in the Framework Programmes grew from 36 participants in FP4 (1998-2002) to 305 (in 181 projects) in FP7 (2007-2013), the latter included 19 projects with Indian researchers coordinating. Under FP7, India was the fourth most active Third Country in terms of participation and in terms of financial contribution (€35.8m) from the European Union – behind only Russia, the United States, and China. A small but significant proportion of this €35.8m was successfully won by researchers conducting Social Science and Humanities -led research.
Nevertheless, international research collaboration between Europe and India in the social sciences and humanities still falls well behind more established science (i.e. life sciences and physical sciences) and technology. This is where EqUIP comes in. EqUIP was created to build on the experience of European Research Area networks, that is, partnerships built by organisations across Europe working together to fund research and foster greater research collaboration. These networks have demonstrated how funders can stimulate and support international collaboration – removing administrative barriers and pooling resources on areas of common interest.
Aims and Objectives
EqUIP aimed to strengthen collaboration by making it easier for organisations to work together, build new, and strengthen existing, relationships build researcher networks and develop priorities on issues of common interest to provide the groundwork for development of future joint funding initiatives. Specifically, it aimed to:
• Provide a coherent overview of current research collaborations between Europe and India in the social sciences and humanities
• Develop best practice approaches and identify challenges for research co-operation between Europe and India in the social sciences and humanities
• Identify opportunities and priorities for future research collaboration between Europe and India in the social sciences and humanities
• Establish networks of pan-European and Indian researchers in the social sciences and humanities addressing cutting-edge research questions.
Strategic Context: Europe-India Strategic Cooperation in Research and Innovation
India’s reputation for research is growing and with it, its researchers’ influence and expertise. Government of India has increased its investment in science and technology and this has resulted in a shift in the European Commission’s strategic engagement with India. Rather than supporting both European and Indian researchers who wish to work together on an issue where Indian expertise is needed, the European Union now tries to secure inter-governmental strategic agreements to co-fund on an equal footing.
The Europe-India Agreement on Scientific and Technological Cooperation (2001) was a major outcome of the launch of the European Research Area (ERA) at the Lisbon European Council in 2000, and continues to shape Europe-India science and technology cooperation. This document defined the purpose and principles of co-operation and was renewed in 2007 and 2016 to 2020. This agreement was based on principles of reciprocity and equal contribution. A Strategic Forum was established to help cooperative activities, identify new priorities and recommend joint initiatives, subject to available resources, which could include jointly funded/ coordinated projects, researcher visits and exchanges between countries and access to data and equipment. The adoption of the European Research Area Vision 2020 in 2008, and the launch of India’s Decade of Innovation in 2010 , in particular marked a shift towards reciprocity in Europe-India research cooperation.
While the value of international research cooperation with ’third countries’, outside Europe, to EU competitiveness remained an important element of the European Research Area Vision 2020 (ERA), the European Union took the decision, in its Horizon 2020 programme, not to automatically fund these third country researchers. Its calls would remain open to participation from researchers from those countries (bringing their own funding) and targeted activities could be developed where cooperation on particular topics was prioritised. However, the only calls on which Indian researchers could still receive automatic funding were through responsive mode applications, that is, applications driven wholly by the interests of the researchers themselves rather than responses to a request from the funder for applications on a specific topic.
The removal of emerging economies from the list of countries eligible to receive automatic funding in the collaborative projects of Horizon 2020 has led to a marked decrease in their EU Framework Programme participation. In the first two years of Horizon 2020 there were only 7 Indian participants, an 85% reduction since FP7 in the number of Indian participants, the number of projects with Indian participants, and the total value of those projects. While Brazil, Russia, China and Mexico were also included in the policy change, the greatest reductions have been in the participation of Indian researchers, and inter-governmental co-funding agreements have been slow to negotiate.
The 2012 Europe-India Joint Declaration on Research and Innovation Cooperation reaffirmed a joint intention to define a strategic partnership with the aim of finding solutions to societal challenges of mutual concern. This built on two joint Europe-India conferences (November 2010, and May 2012) held to identify science and technology priorities and propose coordinated actions, to shape the India-EU and Member States’ Strategic Roadmap for Research and Innovation. The Joint Declaration called for increased in cooperation to be supported by a Group of Senior Officials (GSO) who meet every two years, co-chaired by the director of DG Research & Innovation and the Secretary of the Indian Department of Science and Technology (DST). This group is charged with leading the development of the “Europe-India Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA)”. The renewed Roadmap for Europe-India S&T cooperation in March 2016, which will guide the India-EU strategic partnership over the next five years, agreed to intensify Europe-India cooperation in science, technology and innovation and in addressing global challenges, and welcomed the joint financing of research and innovation projects. The Roadmap, in particular, included the 2015 Europe-India Joint Steering Committee agreement to explore cooperation in the following areas: health, water, energy, smart cities, food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research and the bio-economy, nanotechnologies, and advanced materials. A network of organisations to strengthen collaboration in these areas was established (Inno Indigo and Indigo Policy) which have been directly shaped by the delivery of this Roadmap agenda through funding for research that enables researchers from several countries to apply.
While there are opportunities for cross-disciplinary projects that could include social science and humanities researchers in addressing these themes, the Roadmap does not yet include any social science and humanities led themes. This is, in part, because the agreement is negotiated with the Indian Department of Science and Technology (DST), which cannot fund social science and humanities-led research. The Ministry of Human Resources and Development (MHRD), responsible for social science and humanities -led research funding in India, has not been engaged in this process. Similarly while there have been agreements to co-fund the participation of Indian researchers in Horizon 2020 with the Indian Department of Science and Technology (DST), the Indian Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) there have been no such agreements with The Ministry of Human Resources and Development (MHRD), and while some of these calls were required to include social science and/or humanities expertise, there have been no targeted Indian calls in the Horizon 2020 work programme on topics that would be social science and humanities led.
This lack of social science and humanities -led topics in the Strategic Agenda for Europe-India Science and &Technology Cooperation is a significant omission, because it means that the agenda does not accord with other relevant Europe-India priorities for cooperation that might benefit from joint Europe-India insights. The 13th Europe-India Summit, for example, alongside the Roadmap, endorsed the establishment of the Common Agenda on Migration and Mobility (CAMM) between the EU and India, also emphasising the importance of India as a strategic partner for the EU in the field of migration and mobility. The Common Agenda on Migration and Mobility, as a framework for cooperation, was intended to be the beginning of a longer term process towards deeper cooperation on migration, a key global policy area. Similarly research to understand and address many of the Sustainable Development Goals, committed to by the EU member states and India, lend themselves to social science and humanities-led research and innovation, as well as cross-disciplinary projects, beyond social sciences and the humanities, that span more than one branch of specialist knowledge.
EqUIP was established to address and better understand the gap in strategic cooperation in social science and humanities; to better understand the challenges and to identify priorities for cooperation. As such it has developed in a very different way from Inno Indigo and Indigo Policy, itssister science, technology and innovation networks, since, rather than beginning with the themes established through the Roadmap, EqUIP needed to develop new social science and humanities-led priority themes. This development of a thematic agenda was therefore a key aim and required the network to gain a better understanding of the Indian social science and humanities funding environment the extent of existing collaboration and expertise in specific areas. The next section will outline the findings from EqUIP’s activities to gather information to better understand existing social science and humanities collaboration and the Indian funding environment, which has been an important contribution to knowledge on Europe-India strategic collaboration in the social sciences and humanities.
Project Results:
Europe-India Collaboration in the Social Sciences and Humanities
This section provides an overview of the knowledge developed through EqUIP activities of the state of Europe-India research collaboration in the social sciences and humanities (social science and humanities) and in particular the implications of the funding provision in India for international research collaboration as this has a direct effect on who European organisations can work with and what funds are available for larger scale initiatives like EqUIP.
There are high quality, world renowned social science and humanities researchers, writers and artists in India, but data from a database of published research (Scopus) on the extent to which researchers are publishing suggests that the volume of social science and humanities research activity between 2002 and 2015 in India was low compared to that in science and technology, and had a slightly smaller share of the total Indian publication output than might be expected in other countries. Nevertheless, over the more recently period since 2009, India has ranked 11th globally for social science published output, in close competition with other emerging science nations like Brazil. The constraints of the funding environment for social science and humanities has also encouraged cross-disciplinary working beyond social science and humanities, with particular specialisation in social science related to engineering, sciences and allied disciplines, and agriculture and allied sciences, which has some synergy with EU–Government of India agreed research priorities.
International co-publication, meaning when authors based in different countries joint author an publication about their research, is a useful shorthand measure of collaboration. Around 16% of the Indian social science and humanities output was published with international co-authors between 2002 and 2015, reflecting an internationally engaged research community and just under half of these co-publications were with European researchers. Collaboration with the UK is significantly stronger than with other European countries (as with other English language countries outside Europe), but there are ad hoc collaborations across a large number of European countries that amount to more than the collaborative publication between India and the USA, the country with greatest collaboration with India in social science and humanities. Co-publication is a blunt tool for understanding collaboration as it does not reflect the extent of influence of smaller research communities in any one country but it highlights the existing networks with India amongst researchers from the United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, France and Switzerland in particular.
This co-publication data will provide some important to inform decision-making about the demand from a country’s research community to work with India, and potentially to inform membership of EqUIP in future. The European countries co-publishing most with Indian social science and humanities researchers also include for example Italy, Spain, Sweden, Belgium and Denmark.
Europe-India social science and humanities collaboration has also been increasing at a faster rate than Indian collaboration with social science and humanities researchers in other parts of the world. This increase in collaboration with Europe has been a relatively long term trend (since 2004) but there has been a marked step-change since 2012 which may relate to the tripling of national Indian social science research budgets following a Government of India ’Nayyar Review’ Inquiry into social science research (Ministry of Human Resource Development, 2011). This period of growth also included Indian researchers’ participation in the EU Framework Programme of research funding and bilateral national networking funds, and the first initiative between more than two countries, the EU-India Research Networking Projects, which provided funding to build collaborative networks between researchers from India, UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands. This increased investment in social science in India (although still relatively small compared to India’s investment in science and technology) and the growing networks between Europe-India researchers have marked a key moment of opportunity for the development of the EqUIP platform in 2014-17.
Understanding the opportunities and challenges for fostering greater social science and humanities research collaboration has been particularly important since some changes in European Union research funding policy which means that Indian researchers since 2014 have no longer been eligible to receive funding from the EU through most of its funding schemes. Indian social science and humanities researchers have continued to be competitive when applying for funding but the numbers applying have dropped from an already low level (details can be found online in the EqUIP Scoping Report and Final Scoping Report). The numbers of these projects funded without direct funding for Indian social science and humanities researchers have been very low. In this new context it is important to understand what other opportunities and mechanisms there are for building collaborative networks to enable European and Indian researchers to work together to conduct research to tackle issues of international importance.
Early in its development EqUIP sought to better understand the extent of existing collaboration with India amongst organisations engaged in the network. This was later updated so that the Summary report could then include up to date data and information from a wider range of European funders. Details of this work can be found online in the Scoping Report on Existing Collaboration and Future Interests and Opportunities, and Final Scoping Report on Existing Collaboration and Future Interests and Opportunities. These reports revealed a number of bi-lateral (between India and one other European organisation) fellowship programmes and funds for visits and fieldwork activities (as well as the multi-lateral mentioned above). There were also some exceptions such as the German-Indian M.S. Merian - R. Tagore International Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, which provided longer term investment in a research centre to facilitate greater collaboration. However most of the initiatives had been social science-led, including, for example: the ICSSR/ESRC Scholar Exchange scheme; the Indian-European Research Networking Programme, (ICSSR, ANR, DFG, ESRC and NWO); the Migration, Development and Conflict programme (ICSSR, NWO, Tata Institute of Social Sciences among others); and Social Science Scholar Exchange Application (ICSSR, NWO); Samenwerking India - Social Science Cooperation India-Netherlands (SSCIN). AHRC had also run an initiative in Design which is not universally considered humanities.
Researchers could also apply to all the EqUIP funding agencies individually for research funding that encouraged collaboration (such as the “Norway - Global partner” (NORGLOBAL) call and ESRC/AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund). AHRC/ ESRC (UK) also used a funding mechanism that enabled researchers from any country to apply for up to a third of the funding for a research project when applying with a UK researcher for their funding. Although largely funding social science, these applications from researchers initiating collaboration independent of any specific national scheme meant research had also been funded in the arts and humanities (especially in history, languages and design) by AHRC, AKA and TEKES (the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation), and MIZS, including Europe-India collaborations on cross-disciplinary projects that went beyond social science and humanities boundaries. This review of the existing collaboration between funding organisations directly informed steps partners then took to reach out to further Indian funders to start to foster greater collaborative opportunities in the arts and humanities.
Understanding Research Funding for Social Science and Humanities in India
EqUIP has also been able to develop a better understanding of Indian funding of social science and humanities to help guide European organisations’ collaborative activity. The majority of funding for research in India is through central government, the majority of which funds research led by natural science (81% of the Government of India spend on research in 2012-13). This funding is largely administered through the Department of Science and Technology with additional funding from other affiliated Ministries such as the Department for Bio-technology, which have been the organisations that the European Union has had most contact in its inter-governmental negotiations. However, these Ministries do not fund research on issues which require a lead from social science and humanities, such as migration issues, sustainable development or research around poverty and inequality.
The most important source of funding for social science and humanities-led research in India is the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), and this is awarded to researchers by a number of subsidiary organisations, including: the University Grants Commission, Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR), Indian Council for Philosophical Research (ICPR), Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR), The Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Project of History of Indian Science, Philosophy and Culture (PHISPC) and National University of Education Planning and Administration (NUEPA). Other ministries, such as the Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Planning, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Women and Child Development also invest in research and data collection to inform policy, the last two having sharply increased their investment in research in the last ten years. Although regional/ state governments also invest in social science research and data collection (representing around 17% of funding nationally), and the corporate sector, international donors and individual philanthropy are also important sources of research funding that are beginning to gain ground in India, MHRD remains by far the most significant funder of social science and humanities research. But MHRD is a very different kind of Ministry to the Department of Science and Technology, with a far wider remit across the primary and higher education system, and skills. MHRD’s research budget represented only 0.53% of the overall MHRD budget in 2012-13 which means that it devolves research funding decision-making and to some extent development of international collaboration to its subsidiary organisations.
One of the challenges for international collaboration between countries with different systems is in finding the most appropriate partner. Of the MHRD’s subsidiary funding agencies, the Indian Council for Social Science Research is the main agency supporting social science research (and some humanities as definitions differ), receiving around 65% of the funding for social science and humanities research from MHRD in 2012-13, and an increasing share of funding as other Councils’ shares have declined. It was established on April 15, 1969 to promote social science research by providing funding for institutions and researchers in India and also has a mandate for international research collaboration, particularly since the ‘Nayyar review’ , which recommended an increase in funding to ensure that social science in India was not left behind science and technology. These increases have been important to the support for social science research in India but are dwarfed by the rises in STI funding, but this has also meant a significant uplift in funding to support International Collaboration ). Although the funding for ICSSR has remained static for some years this increase in funding in 2012 has provided a basis for fostering greater international collaboration.
By contrast there is no single funder for the humanities in India. The Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) and the Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR) were established in the 1970s to promote their disciplines but their budget and degree of international engagement is far lower, and reducing. The Ministry of Culture also provides a small amount of funding for fellowships and awards for researchers and artists, and a budget for international cooperation, but the research budget has also been reducing over time. The limited existing international collaboration in the arts and humanities is in part a symptom of this very different research funding context to the social sciences and presents considerable challenges for the development of joint funded initiatives between countries in the arts and humanities, not least because it would require collaboration between organisations in India that had not, at time of writing, worked with one another on joint projects.
Building New Relationships in India
In order to begin to build relationships with arts and humanities funders in India, EqUIP partners invited MHRC subsidiary organisations - the Indian Council of Historical Research and Indian Council of Philosophical Research - to join EqUIP activities. These organisations had had considerably less experience of international collaborative activities than ICSSR in part due to limited budgets for such activities. The Indian Council of Historical Research could also only fund history which presents some barriers to development of often more cross-disciplinary research initiatives aimed at tackling societal challenges. Nevertheless, they actively engaged in attending EqUIP’s Staff Exchange events and nominated experts to attend all of the expert workshops. These opportunities have created greater awareness and understanding within these organisations of the potential for international engagement through mechanisms like EqUIP. In addition, although both funded by MHRD, these organisations had not, to date, collaborated to fund cross-disciplinary research and a key outcome of this engagement has been the beginnings of conversations between these Indian organisations around cross-disciplinary funding mechanisms and collaboration across their organisations nationally. This collaboration between Indian organisations, and potentially across Ministries if other funders are engaged, will be important for future international engagement at a larger scale, which has been a key finding for Indian international collaboration policy.
EqUIP has also attempted to reach out to non-governmental research funders, such as the Indian Foundation for the Arts, who were also invited to a funder workshop, a staff exchange and a symposium event. This was one of a number of International and Indian non-governmental funding agencies that were approached who are also an important sources of funding for Indian social science and humanities researchers. There are a number of significant international donor investors in research in India and Indian charitable funders, such as the Tata Trusts (which have notably invested in the Tata Institute for Social Science), have emerged as significant research funders, particularly since new Corporate Social Responsibility rules came into effect in India, requiring companies of a substantial size/ turnover to spend 2% of their profits on social development related activities (including Research and Development). While this represents a potential future direction for greater cross-sector collaboration, if these organisations show interest, these arrangements can be complex, particularly when also across many countries. EqUIP’s discussions about the potential for engagement with non-governmental funders are likely to be over the longer term.
Findings and Recommendations
EqUIP activities have created a body of knowledge about the opportunities and challenges for international collaboration between European and Indian social science and humanities researchers on issues of international importance. The review of existing co-publication between researchers and of EU and national initiatives and funding to support collaborative research has in particular stressed the growth of collaboration in the social sciences but the disparity in the strength of collaboration in the humanities. A key challenge for collaboration in the social sciences and humanities, compared to science and technology, is the relatively limited funding available for researchers in India and in Europe, particularly since the change in eligibility of Indian applicants under Horizon 2020. European Research Council and national funding mechanisms (although important in fostering Europe-Indian collaborative research on social science and humanities-led societal challenges) are insufficient for widening European engagement with Indian social science and humanities research communities. EqUIP has recommended that the European Union may wish to revisit the decision not to fund Indian researchers in social science and humanities-led calls given the strength of the Indian research community on topics relevant to international cooperation agreements such as the international Sustainable Development Goals and migration.
EqUIP’s work to better understand existing initiatives to foster Europe-India collaboration has also highlighted the limited funding for research projects to date. With limited eligibility for EU research project funding, an alternative mechanism like EqUIP has the potential to offer Indian researchers an important opportunity to apply for funding to allow them to work with researchers across a number of European countries, while reducing the administrative costs for many European countries wishing to increase opportunities for their researchers to work with Indian experts. EqUIP has been, and has the potential to remain, an important mechanism for building understanding and experience in multi-lateral collaboration (across several countries’ organisations) to facilitate research on challenges that would need to be social science and humanities-led.
There is a clear economy of scale for Indian partners in being able to work with multiple countries through a multilateral mechanism. Large scale initiatives across a number of countries are also important in allowing new perspectives and research expertise to be brought together to address issues of international importance. EqUIP activities established a shared vision across partners to work towards a pilot joint initiative, with a remit to explore the potential for a step-change in collaboration to pilot funding to enable researchers from several countries to work together on research projects of international impact.
A Europe-India Strategic Research Agenda
A core element of the EqUIP activities has been the identification and agreement of priority issues that would most benefit from bringing Social Sciences and the Humanities expertise from India and Europe together. While important that funders identified topics that they could fund EqUIP has also worked to ensure that these topics would be shaped by experts best placed to identify issues at the cutting edge of current research. EqUIP partners, including the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR) and University Grants Commission (UGC), contributed information on their short, medium and long term research priorities. Partner agencies then nominated an expert group to help refine a long list of 38 research priorities ranging from very narrowly defined research questions and problems to broadly defined areas of knowledge. The members of the Expert Group were invited to participate in an online process of grouping of the priorities, using the tool Well Sorted. The Expert Group then met in London on 15th January 2015 to use the results of this online tool to discuss, clarify and define these groupings and highlight issues that would benefit from further development and focus by specialists in these areas. This advice was included in the initial EqUIP Scoping Report. This process identified five broad areas for further exploration through the series of workshops with experts – the EqUIP symposia series.
Inequalities, Growth and Place/Space
This very broad thematic area encompassed issues around inequalities, economic opportunities, environmental change and changing demographics. Their spatial dimensions were included both through a focus on cities and urbanisation and peri-urban and rural areas with an important common strand of issues around the natural environment, in particular the impact of environmental degradation or natural events on migration. Equally this theme included issues around social or cultural ‘encounters’, within and between communities within cities and regions.
Sustainable Prosperity, Wellbeing and Innovation
Access to health, education, sustainable livelihoods and social innovation in their provision were the focus of this theme. The title was also intended to go beyond economic understandings of prosperity and encapsulate wider notions of prosperity, inclusion and wellbeing, to include a range of economic, social, environmental and cultural factors.
Social Transformation, Cultural Expressions, Cross-Cultural Connections and Dialogue
This thematic area incorporated issues around identity, language, shared histories, diversities and diasporas, both past and future. Cultural dialogue and mobility of communities between and within India and Europe were also a core part of this theme, including the emergence of new cosmopolitan societies and diasporas across Europe. Cross-cultural connections through creative practice, religion, languages and literatures were all included in this thematic area.
Power Structures, Conflict Resolution and Social Justice
This thematic area was focussed on issues around conflict resolution and social justice, with some overlap with issues of social inequalities, diversities and gender. This theme also touches on issues around peace and different approaches to societal reform, whether initiated by governments or popular movements/ citizen activism.
Digital Archives and Databases as a Source of Mutual Knowledge
This last theme differs from the other themes in that is focuses more on infrastructure to support the work of researchers needing to access historical records, creative materials, data from surveys and data collected through government and commercial organisations that can be used to understand societal issues. To create accessible databases of printed material, media files of recordings of interviews, past records of social trends and physical habitats, and tribal languages and practices, for example, also needs investment in digitisation. Development of such databases requires agreement to make the information available, and the technology and resources to store, format and organise them so that they can be accessed remotely without infringing privacy, security and other concerns. There were therefore issues around methods, regulation and funding collaborations included under this theme.
The EqUIP Symposia series
Five thematic two day symposia were organised in Rome (Italy), Helsinki (Finland) and Delhi and Gurgaon (India) between October 2015 and October 2016 to develop and refine these themes and foster networking among experts in these areas. Around fifty experts from the social science and humanities disciplines, from both Europe and India, were invited to each event to discuss the opportunities and challenges in each thematic area and to explore the potential added value of Europe-India collaboration for addressing societal challenges. Typically these events consisted of plenary speakers to stimulate debate and group discussions and were chaired by an academic convenor.
A sixth EqUIP Summary Symposium, was held on 25-26 October 2016 in Bled (Slovenia) with a slightly different purpose from the thematic symposia. This event was designed to bring convenors and expert participants who had attended the five thematic events back together to consider the findings, conclusions and recommendations from the previous five symposia and identify areas of cross-over and particular priority for cross-disciplinary research to inform future development of joint EqUIP initiatives. The highlights and conclusions from each of the previous symposia were presented to all participants and attending funding organisation and discussed in particular to identify cross-cutting and distinct issues that had emerged from the thematic symposia. Participants were asked to refine and prioritize possible topics through a voting exercise.
Findings and Recommendations
Overall this series of events brought together more than 200 European and Indian experts to identify and develop the strategic priorities for future research collaboration. In addition the events stimulated networking among experts working in related areas and shared researchers’ experiences and challenges in research collaboration between Europe and India, and developed ideas of how these might be overcome. The outcomes from the last summary event were outlined in a Reflection Report, as they were for the thematic events, and are listed in descending order of priority below.
Priority themes
1. Conflict and conflict resolutions and how they travel(led) across India and Europe.
2. Implications of migration in Europe and India
3. Re-thinking citizenship, state and the social contract in India and Europe
4. Sustainable prosperity, growth and well-being
5. Sustainability and the making of rural and urban living spaces
6. Social movements, appeals to social justice and political alternatives
7. Political economies of inequalities
8. Alternative modernity: new understandings of Modernities in a globalizing world
9. Creative expressions and arts across cultures
10. Innovative approaches to heritage and communities (digitizing sources, preserving heritage, politics of preserving heritage, new methods of digitization)
11. Gender – intersectionality. The changing nature of gender relations in India and Europe
12. Critical studies on data collections and access
13. Everyday creativity and digital culture (technology, openness, digital literacy, innovation)
14. Smart health governance (national and global) and issues of equitable distribution
15. Cartographies of vernacular cultures: language, memory and heritage
16. The critical relationship between education and social policy (private-public sector, teacher’s education, role of the state, ideology, migration)
These discussions did not result in a detailed outline of these topics, but were rather intended to establish where there would be added value in Europe-India collaboration. They were highlighted in particular as they were areas of mutual interest for both Europe and India and called for cross-disciplinary research to address them. These topics have the potential to offer a set of thematic priorities on which to build in the development of future joint initiatives both through EqUIP and through other multi-lateral and bi-lateral mechanisms, and have considerable synergy with the EU research programme (Horizon 2020 Societal Challenges) and with international policy agreements around the Sustainable Development Goals.
Inter-Organisational Learning to Strengthen Collaboration
Review of existing collaboration between partners in the early stages of the project highlighted significant variation in the extent of past and current collaboration with India amongst EqUIP partners in the social sciences and humanities, particularly compared to science and technology. For many partners these relationships were therefore new, and sharing learning across the existing partners and building trust and strong working relationships was important if organisations were to work together effectively going forward. A number of activities were therefore designed to help organisations learn from and better understand each other’s systems and processes, working cultures and share experiences of collaboration. These activities also offered opportunities to enable new funding partners to take part. This section outlines these activities in brief and then highlights some of the key findings and recommendations from them.
The first of these activities was a ‘Joint Learning Workshop’ (15-16 September 2015), which was hosted by the Research Council Norway (RCN) with the support of the Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI). This was a key event for the network as it brought together over 30 participants from 22 existing and new partner organisations from 14 countries. The event particularly enabled organisations to share their experiences of collaboration with India/ Europe and identify potential ways in which the network could support collaboration in future. This workshop highlighted many critical factors relevant to the design and implementation of initiatives which could then feed in to the development of a future funding initiative. These are outlined in detail in the Joint Learning Workshop Report available online. As such this event provided momentum for the development of a joint funding initiative for EqUIP which was then taken forward by a small ‘Funding Futures’ working group of EqUIP partners.
The discussions at the workshop particularly highlighted many EqUIP partners’ positive experiences of working with other countries through issuing joint calls for research projects through other European Research Area networks of funders. These initiatives can be administratively complex for the organisations, and so lengthy to arrange and agree, but the benefits in terms of efficiency and enabling new networks of research expertise to be brought together were highly valued. The discussion groups were invited to assess the various strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for the development of such initiatives given the different context of working across Europe and India. The strengths and the opportunities identified mainly related to the recognised benefits of multilateral cooperation mechanisms for many partners, the weaknesses and threats largely relate to financial resources and maintaining commitment of partners.
Organisational Strengths
• Motivation of Funders from Europe and India.
• Trust building is a key benefit of ongoing engagement
• Multilateral cooperation widens opportunities for collaboration
• Multilateral cooperation can be more efficient than bilateral - several countries - one evaluation process.
• European partners are able to engage flexibly according to thematic priorities and can draw on experiences of multi-lateral engagement in Europe
Organisational Weaknesses
• Coordination costs high compared to funds committed
• Demand unknown for a pilot call - high requires a narrow theme, low may favour wider
• Limited Indian funding means initiatives may be unbalanced - not all European funding may be spent.
• Social science may crowd out the humanities
• Long-term commitment difficult with variable geometry
• Indian partners/ researchers less familiar with multi-lateral calls then European
• Organisations may have different funding requirements
External Opportunities
• Coordination costs high compared to funds committed
• Demand unknown for a pilot call - high requires a narrow theme, low may favour wider
• Limited Indian funding means initiatives may be unbalanced - not all European funding may be spent.
• Social science may crowd out the humanities
• Long-term commitment difficult with variable geometry
• Indian partners/ researchers less familiar with multi-lateral calls then European
• Organisations may have different funding requirements
External Threats
• Changing political situation: diplomatic relations between countries, economic situation and funding for research
• Limited funding for social science and humanities specifically
• Limited commitment of programme owners
• Multilateral collaboration can compete with bilateral
• Legal issues/obstacles on national and EU level
• Without balanced agenda setting and cultural sensitivity the collaboration might affect international relations
• Building Europe-India research collaborations can be logistically complicated – EU institutions may restrict collaboration to key institutions, Delhi dominance
Given the challenges and opportunities for developing an initiative the Funding Futures Working Group, conducted a survey of partners to identify organisational preferences for different funding mechanisms and thematic priorities which was then used to shape early discussions of the pilot joint funding initiative.
This event also accompanied the commencement of the Staff Exchange Scheme visits between the partner organisations. The scheme aimed to sharing knowledge and experiences, further understanding and build trust among partners and helped in building professional networks and good relationships across the partner organisations, beyond those representing their organisation in the network. A number of EqUIP partner organisations hosted visits for staff members of other partner organisations with a programme of activities for the visitors. Between September 2015 and October 2016 nine visits were organised, two of which included visits to two different organisations; overall 45 different staff members participated in the scheme. The trips to the Indian partner, ICSSR, also included visits to the additional Indian partner organisations (Indian Council for Historical Research and Indian Council for Philosophical Research) as well as the Indian University Grants Commission.
The EqUIP Staff Exchange Scheme Report detailed the development and delivery of this scheme and, in particular, highlighted feedback on good ideas, thoughts or best practices from those attending the visits that they felt they would like to introduce either in their own organisations or in EqUIP. Visitors expressed the importance of meeting representatives from different organisations in order to gain an understanding of the context, approaches and priorities from different country perspectives, as well as a more holistic understanding of how the organisations operate, and in turn how mutual learning and collaboration could be achieved through engagement in EqUIP. It was evident that the visits benefited reciprocal learning between organisations and participants noted that enabling colleagues to visit each other’s organisations and the mutual learning that resulted from this was crucial for future engagement and collaboration within EqUIP.
Visitors were especially interested in learning about funding schemes and mechanisms of other organisations, other organisations’ peer review systems and international and national social science and humanities research activities. In both hosts’ and the visitors’ opinions, the most important things discussed and learned were related to the political context, funding systems, how the organisation was structured and governed, their existing experiences of working with India and learning about the host country and its culture. They also mentioned the value of learning about how to effectively involve the scientific community in developing a call for funding and new ideas about supporting researchers in ensuring their research has influence and practical impact, and engaging communities, businesses and people potentially using the research in from its design through to its dissemination.
In addition to these inter-organisational visits and workshops, researchers who attended the series of thematic symposia were invited to highlight challenges encountered when undertaking research collaborations between Europe and India and for examples and ideas for how these challenges might be overcome. These insights were included in the symposia Reflection Reports and provided an additional insight into the challenges, from the researchers’ perspectives, for funders to address in designing initiatives for Europe-India social science and humanities research collaboration.
Key Recommendations for the Development of EqUIP Joint Activities
This section will not repeat the information detailed in these various reports, which are publicly available, but will highlight key findings and recommendations from them to help practically resolve and adapt to these strategic challenges and opportunities to strengthen collaboration and develop future joint initiatives. Some are recommendations that could be taken forward by stakeholders beyond those engaged in the EqUIP platform or that would require engagement with new partners. Reflection on the implications of learning for the future of the platform is captured in a Summary Report.
Supporting Researcher Networks
• Funding to support networking of researchers could foster greater collaboration where organisational relationships and researcher networks are weaker, e.g. in the humanities.
• EqUIP should look at how it could build on existing programmes and provide a legacy for the symposia series by promoting researcher networks between the countries. EqUIP networking events in thematic areas could build wider stakeholder engagement.
• Researchers may need support to build project teams across several countries where existing relationships are weaker. This needs to be taken into account in the call schedule (e.g. longer time frames from call launch to submission) and infrastructure to support consortia building (e.g. an online database of interested researchers).
• Timing of calls should take account of difference in availability to dedicate time to develop proposals due to geographically different university and holiday calendars.
• Distance learning initiatives could be considered to foster collaboration, such as e-learning platforms, virtual classrooms/skype, as well as exchange schemes.
Supporting International Engagement of Early Career Researchers
• Funding should be targeted mainly to researchers already holding a PhD but projects should be encouraged to include early career researchers, potentially with a mentor in another country, to provide them with the opportunity to gain experience and build international networks.
• Training activities to support understanding of application processes could be considered by national funders and institutions (e.g. how to write a competitive proposal for researchers less experienced in proposal writing).
Development of Joint Funding Opportunities for Collaboration
• Planning for schemes should take into account available budgets for social science and humanities research funding in many of the countries involved.
• A variety of funding initiatives may need to be designed to take account of the limited international engagement in the humanities to date.
• Several EqUIP partners’ organisational mandates prevent them from funding networking/ exchange activities. These differences in what organisations can fund mean that there is a need for countries to choose whether or not to take part in an initiative. Not all partners need take part in every activity.
• Funding should be based on a model of funding which means that each funding agency will fund its own country’s successful applicants within its own normal eligibility rules.
• For managing possible joint calls, a secretariat should be established. The participating countries could take turns as a secretariat
• European Union co-funding should be sought where possible to make the collaboration more cost-effective and support wider participation from other countries.
• Indian currency contributions should be understood in terms of what they buy in India rather than their value in another currency.
• Initiatives could include funds for innovation, particularly if aimed at benefiting the most deprived groups’ well-being, prosperity, happiness and quality of life and focus on using and generating sustainable and renewable energy and resources.
• Funding should encourage cross-disciplinary social sciences and humanities projects and ensure call text is meaningful to social scientists and humanities researchers.
• Although thematic priorities should reflect fundable areas of common interest for EqUIP partners, development of joint initiatives should be informed by discussions with expert research and research users around topics that represent the cutting edge areas of common strength and/or gaps in knowledge.
• The thematic areas for the calls need to be broad enough to attract high quality proposals but at the same time narrow enough to be manageable for organisations involved in terms of numbers of applications and for researchers to feel there is sufficient chance of successful application.
• Non-academic researchers should be funded, where possible, in research proposals.
• Programmes should be of sufficient duration to building sustainable cooperation
• Funders should explore how complexities in gaining visa permissions to conduct collaborative research could be made simpler and less time-consuming.
Sharing Practice to Promote Impact and Knowledge Exchange
• Research projects should be funded because they are scientifically excellent, but should also recognise and support researchers’ activities to have practical impact and influence through engagement and exchange of knowledge with potential users of the research findings, including requesting an outline of planned activities and intended outcomes on application for funding.
• EqUIP could include a joint activity amongst partners in the next phase of the network’s activities to share approaches to impact, influence and knowledge exchange to develop shared practice for future EqUIP initiatives.
• The reporting requirements enforced by funding organisations should be kept to a minimum. Monitoring should focus on knowledge exchange and dissemination of project results, allowing for increased visibility for social science and humanities.
Evaluation/ Peer Review Procedures
• Joint evaluation procedures should always be collectively agreed and funding decisions be taken on the basis of clear ranking of proposals by anonymous international independent peer review panels.
• Evaluation panels could include multidisciplinary evaluation teams, experts who have successfully promoted innovation and specialists with broad views of methods.
• In addition to research excellence, evaluation panels could consider aspects such as originality, added value of collaboration, innovative content, reasonable costs, compliance with programme objectives, activities to foster use and impact of research. Guidance for reviewers should be prepared to help in assessing value-for-money of projects.
• If demand proves high, a two-stage process may be preferable. A potential model to foster new collaborations could be a stage-gated approach (providing seed funding for a smaller project at first stage, which is then developed for application to full research projects). This, however, requires considerable commitment of funds over a longer period of time.
Facilitate Data Access and Open Access Publication
• Investment in data infrastructure and access to data (e.g. digitisation of historical collections, longitudinal survey/ datasets) is an area for potential collaboration to support research able to take the long view in addressing global challenges.
• Sharing learning around access to data infrastructure, open access to content and mutual sharing of international data and information should be a focus for activity and policy development around privacy, data security and intellectual property.
Potential Impact:
Strategic impact
EqUIP has created an unprecedented opportunity for Indian and European social science and arts and humanities funders to work together to build stronger strategic partnerships. EqUIP’s various activities created valuable time and opportunity to build stronger relationships of trust, understanding and mutual respect between partner organisations. The activities have enabled multiple partners to work together to establishment a joint initiative, with an overall value of over 5.5Million Euros, to fund research, which will in turn provide concrete opportunities for excellent researchers from across Europe and India to collaborate to conduct research addressing issues of international concern.
Strengthening European Research Collaboration
The EqUIP network has provided an important means of building on the past experiences of pan-European collaboration across many organisations in Europe to then take this collaboration one step further to enable pan-European collaboration with India. EqUIP has strengthened European research collaboration networks, in particular, by providing a potential route for existing European networks of funders of humanities (such as the Humanities European Research Area- HERA) and social sciences (such as the New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Co-operation in Europe - NORFACE) to collaborate outside Europe with the Indian sub-continent. The platform also provides an opportunity for joint working between the HERA and NORFACE platform partners, effectively bringing those platforms together to work across disciplines. Moreover EqUIP activities have begun to establish cross-disciplinary, as well as cross-national, networks of researchers. A key outcome of the EqUIP activities has been to bring about a joint funded initiative across Europe which has the potential to further collaboration between partners and researchers wishing to work with Indian researchers who have never worked together or only in an ad hoc way.
Strengthening social sciences and humanities collaboration
The scoping work undertaken by EqUIP has highlighted the growth in international collaboration with India in the social sciences and the relative weakness of collaboration in the humanities. Although there are barriers to collaboration in the structure of the Indian funding environment, the relationships built through EqUIP between Indian funders have been important, particularly at a time when the Government of India has been reviewing its arrangements to foster international research collaboration and looks to be working towards more cross-disciplinary structures to make international engagement easier. These changes in the Indian research collaboration landscape are likely to take place over the longer term but Indian partners have noted the stronger relationships built between them through engagement in EqUIP, and a greater awareness of some of the barriers created by the fragmented structure of funding, particularly for humanities, for international strategic collaboration. These are important changes that should not be under-estimated. This learning around the research funding landscape for collaboration has been key to the development of a joint funding initiative but also in shaping partners’ thinking around future initiatives to strengthen collaboration in the social sciences and humanities.
The quality and size of the Indian research social science and humanities research community has also been highlighted through EqUIP activities. Indian partners have supported events to raise the profile of social sciences and humanities within India, as well as in Europe. The pre-announcement of the pilot joint funding initiative explicitly encouraged cross-disciplinary research groups and projects, which again has the potential to provide researchers in these disciplines with new opportunities for interdisciplinary, as well as international, collaboration. In the absence of Indian eligibility for much of the European Union research funding, EqUIP is likely to remain, alongside national, and country to country, programmes, an important source of support for Europe-India research collaboration in the social sciences and humanities.
Supporting and enhancing research relevant to European agendas
EqUIP’s activities have created an opportunity to develop priority themes of common interest to European and Indian national funders and of international relevance. While areas of interest to these organisations, these priority themes were also shaped, through consultation with experts in these areas ensuring they sit at the cutting edge of research knowledge and are, in particular, areas on which there would be added value in Europe-India research collaboration. These areas, shaped by European agendas as well as Indian, have strong synergies with societal challenges that were prioritised for funding within the European Union research funding framework programme (Horizon 2020). Their international relevance and potential impact means that they have unsurprising synergies with internationally agreed Sustainable Development Goals. These priority themes have the potential to inform development of funding initiatives beyond EqUIP, whether through the EU Framework Programme, or through country to country research funding initiatives or other international networks for research collaboration. This research agenda for Europe-India collaboration also has the potential to inform strategic inter-governmental engagement having identified a number of broad areas of potential common interest for collaboration. Until such an agreement could be reached it is recommended that the European Union consider whether related topics in the existing research funding framework programme would benefit from collaboration with Indian expertise, and so benefit from an exception to allow EU funding for researchers from India on those topics. This has been raised at the Programme Committee for Challenge 6.
Better Use of Available Resources
International networks of national research funders have the potential to use national and EU resources effectively to promote collaboration and bring together knowledge and expertise to enable organisational learning and collaboration in a number of different ways.
Avoiding duplication of effort or expenditure
A key aim of EqUIP has been to strengthen relationships between funders to build trust and understanding of existing collaborations to enable better join up between these and avoid competing with each other’s’ bilateral (or small scale multilateral) activities - or repeating each other’s’ mistakes. EqUIP has highlighted the disparate and small scale nature of funding for networking to date between Europe and India, and the demand for collaborative research projects. Discussions at Steering Committees to inform negotiation of this joint initiative have also been important in helping partners come to a further understanding of some of the challenges to be overcome in collaborating multi-laterally. The limited Indian funding available for a pilot initiative meant that potential success rates would be low if there were high demand. For some partners with large, well-connected research communities bilateral mechanisms in these circumstances remained more favourable. However, these inevitably compete for Indian funding with a multi-lateral scheme. It is recommended in the Summary report that while partners may desire a mixed portfolio in building collaboration with India, there may be a need for some of the larger funders/ countries with large research communities to work strategically, possibly through an India interest group, to avoid competing for a relatively small pot of Indian funding for collaboration in the social sciences and humanities. Equally, for organisations with limited prior engagement with Indian research funders, or with Indian social science and humanities funders specifically, the platform has provided an important means to build relationships cost-effectively. For those coming to the platform later in the project it has been an important mechanism to join the proposed joint initiative and test the demand for collaboration from their research community, where unknown, without the lengthy process and significant outlay of establishing bi-lateral relationships. EqUIP has further highlighted the need for resources to be marshalled effectively if research project funding is to be made available to researchers from across Europe in the context of limited budgets and for a coordinated approach to collaboration to maximize the use of both European and Indian resources. The development of the EqUIP joint call for collaborative research projects across a number of countries, in particular, provides an important opportunity to facilitate this step change in collaboration bringing national funds together to fund research researchers from multiple countries to work on issues of international importance.
Building ‘critical mass’ towards shared learning and reduction in barriers to collaboration
A clear benefit of EqUIP has been in enabling not only Indian and European funders to understand each other better, but also in enabling European organisations to understand each other, particularly their strategies and approaches to engagement internationally within and beyond Europe. Ultimately this is important in helping organisations work with each other effectively and designing collaborative initiatives that meet mutual aims. There has been considerable learning through EqUIP activities to scope and develop priority themes and better understand the funding landscape, and at a practical level, understand each other’s systems and processes through staff exchanges.
Lessons have also been learned from the experiences of other collaborative activities with India through engagement with other funders and funding networks, such as the Inno Indigo network of science, technology and innovation funders and learning from Forte’s (Sweden) bilateral call with India. EqUIP has also potentially fulfilled a need for an expert-led strategic research agenda for social science and humanities-led research where there is currently no voice for social sciences and humanities in the inter-governmental agenda guiding European EU-India research collaboration. EqUIP has highlighted some current barriers to establishing a more cross-disciplinary agenda, incorporating the social sciences and humanities, and raised awareness within the European Commission of the need for a more proactive approach to addressing them. The EqUIP thematic priorities, in particular, have the potential to inform such EU-India discussions. EqUIP’s development of a common research agenda across two (sub) continents is also important in providing a global research agenda, with synergies with global agendas around Sustainable Development Goals as well as H2020 Societal Challenges to help shape international research collaboration initiatives.
The platform has also been able to draw on practice developments through the implementation of a joint initiative of the Trans-Atlantic Platform of social science and humanities funders which were similarly engaged in building connections between European networks of funders with equivalents in North and South America. EqUIP also began to explore the future potential to foster links with other European networks of funders working in more specialist areas of research and innovation with synergies with EqUIP themes, such as JPI Urban Europe. This learning and linkage with other funding networks may facilitate further collaboration in the longer term through these other networks.
EqUIP symposia were also important opportunities for researchers to share learning around collaboration with each other and raised funders’ awareness of some of the barriers and opportunities to support collaboration between Indian and European researchers. Many of these lessons have been collated and fed into the design of the joint initiative. This joint initiative will enable researchers from seven European countries to work collaboratively with Indian researchers which would not have been feasible without the work undertaken through the EqUIP programme of activities. From an Indian perspective an additional key benefit of the platform has been in enabling Indian funding organisations to work with multiple partners in other countries, at a senior level, facilitating a high profile collaborative initiatives, contributing to efforts to raise the profile of its collaborative activity amongst senior decision makers in the Indian landscape with confidence and authority.
Innovative thinking: Thinking about impact of research
An additional impact of the EqUIP staff exchange and joint learning activities between funding organisations has been to share learning between partners around approaches to supporting researcher engagement with research users to foster greater use and influence of research impact. Staff exchange programmes included presentations and discussions of approaches; symposia discussions included discussions of researchers’ experiences in engaging with users and recommendations for funders to support such activity; and showcasing events brought researchers, funders and senior decision-makers together to discuss and highlight approaches to influencing policy and practically addressing societal challenges collectively.
With the agreement to develop a joint initiative, partners entered into more detailed agreements on specific processes, procedures and funding which highlighted some differences between organisations in ethos, understanding and willingness to incorporate requirements on researchers to engage potential users of the research even if wishing to support the use, influence and impact of their research. These differences are not unique to EqUIP and partners have agreed that in phase two of the platform partners will further share understandings, approaches and practice in this area as the platform moves forward. Nevertheless, a key outcome of EqUIP has been that Indian funders will soon be adopting practice, to which they were introduced through the EqUIP staff exchange scheme, which aims to encourage and support researchers in their interactions with potential users of their findings and ensure greater impact on policy and practice.
Forward thinking: Enabling Future Collaborations
EqUIP was established to strengthen Europe-India collaboration over the longer term. To ensure its sustainability Coordinators have worked to support the legacy of EqUIP activities, beyond the life of the EU funding and build lasting collaborative partnerships. EqUIP activities has fostered a network of over 200 researchers and established online networking tools to help researchers stay in touch with one another and to register their interest in the joint initiative. EqUIP has also been successful in attracting new organisations to the network from India and Europe, widening the countries from which researchers could benefit from future collaborative initiatives. It has maximised the opportunity for these agencies to build relationships and engage in a collaborative initiative with potential to build longer term collaborations.
The delivery of the demanding programme of events and reports strengthened the trust and working relationships between existing EqUIP partners. Joint scoping of activities and priorities and discussions at Steering Committees have ensured a degree of joint ‘ownership’ of the network and commitment to shared goals not only during the delivery of the programme of work but also going forward. Decisions on topics for Symposia - and the Symposia themselves – have involved feeding in of strategic priorities from all partners, with advice from experts from partner countries, to ensure shared priorities. The production of reflection papers following symposia, which include research questions and issues on which there would be added value in Europe – India collaboration, have allowed the development of a shared research agenda to inform future collaboration. The decision of Coordinators, ESRC and ICSSR, to resource the coordination of the platform for the next two years, and of other platform members to continue to engage in activities without external funding has ensured that the platform will be able to consolidate the achievements to date, working to ensure a lasting legacy and develop the shape and governance of the platform membership to build a sustainable future.
Main dissemination activities and exploitation of results
EqUIP developed a communication and dissemination strategy, to which all partners delivering events and reports contributed through provision of content for newsletters and website and social media items. Partners delivering symposia events in Finland, India and Slovenia also filmed events and clips of the events are available on the www.equipproject.eu website to reach a wider audience. The symposia event organised by AKA was also live web-streamed. Proactive efforts to engage a wider audience through social media were also made by ESRC in the run up to the Delhi and Brussels symposia events, inviting followers to pose questions for the panel speakers. As the two showcasing events were particularly intended to reach a wider policy and public audience beyond the research community, ESRC and ICSSR released press statements/ media briefing to stimulate wider coverage. This successfully achieved coverage in Asian and International Press and was circulated widely through organisational websites as well as EqUIP’s website and twitter account.
The EqUIP communication and dissemination strategy was a living document which was developed in the course of the project to raise awareness through publicising events and activities. The EqUIP website has been a key mechanism to communicate activities such as the symposia and all publicly available reports have been uploaded. Regular news items were also contributed ahead of and following events. These were also included in regular widely distributed newsletters and social media (@equipproject and organisational social media) and disseminated further through organisations’ communication teams to their country research audiences.
An important audience for the EqUIP activities has also been staff within the organisations involved. The experience of the EqUIP partners has been shared and disseminated by organisations through several routes, including the Joint Workshop Report and the Staff Exchange Report which also included case studies of good practice identified by visitors. The staff exchange programme created opportunities for staff to learn face to face but also one of the website blogs was written by visitors to the staff exchanges.
High-level knowledge exchange between partners, with the European Commission, other funder networks and other relevant decision making bodies such as Science Europe – a body representing research organisations across Europe - has been generated through informal interactions in, and alongside, scheduled EqUIP meetings and events but also through meetings and presentations to these stakeholders.
List of Websites:
EqUIP website address: www.equipproject.eu
The EU-India platform Coordination Office is hosted by the Economic and Social Research Council – ESRC (UK).
EqUIP Coordination Office
International Strategy Team
Economic and Social Research Council
Polaris House
North Star Avenue
Swindon
SN2 1UJ
United Kingdom
You can contact the office on equip@esrc.ac.uk. Please be aware that we do not check the inbox every day so please do not use this email if your query is urgent.
Researchers interested in networking with others engaged in Europe- Indian collaboration can also subscribe to a networking mailing list via the website. The Coordination Office will send out occasional news, and news can also be shared between subscribers to the list with one another.
You can also follow EqUIP on Twitter @Equipproject
What is EqUIP?
The Europe-India Platform for the Social Science and Humanities (EqUIP), is a network of research funding and support organisations from Europe and India. It was established in 2014 to strengthen research collaboration in the social sciences and humanities (SSH). To date it has brought together 20 organisations from 15 European countries and India to develop stronger relationships between research funders and between researchers.
Background
In an increasingly interlinked world, global perspectives are needed to tackle global challenges, many of which are fundamentally human in nature. Social science and humanities research perspectives need to be at the centre of approaches to tackling them. India is rapidly growing into one of the world’s leading research nations, but the extent of collaboration with European researchers in the social sciences and humanities is well behind science and technology. EqUIP has built on the experiences of other European networks of research funders. These networks have started and supported international collaboration by removing administrative barriers to researchers working together internationally, and pooling national resources to fund research on issues of international importance.
EqUIP Activities
EqUIP has supported research funding agencies across Europe and India to understand the opportunities and challenges for greater collaboration. It strengthens their relationships by increasing their understanding of each other’s systems and processes, working cultures and by sharing best practice. EqUIP has built trust and good relationships, by organising staff exchange schemes across eight countries and a workshop to develop a joint vision for future collaboration. EqUIP partners have also agreed priority issues that would benefit from the expertise of excellent Indian and European researchers. This prioritisation has been developed through an academic expert group and a series of six expert workshops on: inequalities, growth and place/apace; digital archives and databases as a source of mutual knowledge; sustainable prosperity, wellbeing and innovation; social transformations, cultural expressions, cross-cultural connections and dialogue; power structures, conflict resolution and social justice. These workshops have also created new networks of researchers in specialist areas.
Main Findings and Results
Through these activities EqUIP has become an important source of information for the people who decide how funding is spent on national research, both those engaged in EqUIP and beyond, which will help inform and shape initiatives to foster collaboration between researchers in India and Europe on issues of common international importance. It has highlighted the significant growth in Europe-India collaboration in the social sciences, and to a lesser extent in the arts and humanities, over the last 10 years, particularly supported by increased investment in Indian social science and a number of past European Union and collaborative national networking schemes. EqUIP has expanded to include more Indian and European funders. It has built new relationships between organisations which will increase opportunities for those organisations to join joint initiatives. A Summary Report captures what partners have learned and reflects on the future of the network.
EqUIP has the potential to enable Indian and European researchers to work together with fewer administrative barriers on issues of international importance. It also offers the potential for their findings to have international impact. EqUIP has laid the groundwork for the network’s first joint call for applications for funding from groups of academics from a number of countries who wish to work together. This was pre-announced at showcasing events in Delhi and Brussels and to be launched in Autumn 2017.
Project Context and Objectives:
This section will provide an introduction to the Europe-India Platform for the Social Science and Humanities (EqUIP), the background to its development and its key aims and objectives. In doing so it also provides an introduction to the wider context of EU-India collaboration to which EqUIP contributes.
The Europe-India Platform for the Social Science and Humanities (EqUIP) is a network of European and Indian organisations that fund and support research. It was established in 2014 with a €1.5 million grant from the European Union (Grant No. 613236) to strengthen research collaboration in the social sciences and humanities (SSH). Since then, it has brought together 20 national organisations from 15 European countries and India to develop stronger strategic partnerships.
By bringing together these organisations, EqUIP builds on a breadth of experience from successful European partner relationships (the NORFACE and HERA European Research Area Networks) to bear in the further development of links with India. EqUIP supports research funding agencies across Europe and India in building these links by enabling them to share best practice, setting up networking opportunities and the development of a strategic research agenda. The network has used these activities to work towards the development of a joint funding initiative.
EqUIP is coordinated by the Economic and Social Research Council based in the UK, in close collaboration with the Indian Council of Social Science Research. The partner organisations that were beneficiaries of the EU grant were:
• UK - Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC)
• India - Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR)
• Finland - Academy of Finland (AKA)
• France - French National Research Agency (ANR)
• Italy - Agency for the Promotion of European Research (APRE)
• Germany - German Research Foundation (DFG) and DLR Project Management Agency (DLR)
• Portugal - Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT)
• Slovenia - Ministry of Education, Science and Sports (MIZS)
• Netherlands - Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO)
• Norway - Research Council of Norway (RCN)
• Austria - Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI)
Since its launch, EqUIP events have helped to initiate relationships with the Indian Council for Historical Research, the Indian Council of Philosophical Research, the University Grants Commission, the India Foundation for the Arts and other Indian research funding and support organisations. European membership of EqUIP has also increased to include the Czech Academy of Sciences and the Polish National Research Centre and relationships with Irish, Swiss and Swedish organisations.
Background to EqUIP
In an increasingly interlinked world where a crisis in one country can very quickly become a crisis everywhere, we need to work together to sort out global problems. But this also means understanding local differences and knowing that a solution in Milan might not work in Mumbai. Technology alone is rarely the solution to these challenges; many of which are fundamentally about human nature - they are about the way we behave. Social science and humanities research can tackle such problems by asking the right questions and offering powerful perspectives
India has a long tradition of scientific and technological endeavours, and has been recognised by the European Union as an increasingly important research collaboration partner. In 2013, 4.4 % of the world’s scholarly output – 106,065 papers – came from India, and the trend is accelerating. India’s research output is far outpacing the world average, increasing by 14 % compared to a world average of 4 %.
This growth was evident when Indian researchers participated in the European Union Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development. This is the EU's main way of funding research in Europe. There were seven Framework Programmes which funded research until 2013 after which it was then renamed Horizon 2020. After the Science and Technology Cooperation Agreement (STCA) between India and the EU in 2001, India’s participation in the Framework Programmes grew from 36 participants in FP4 (1998-2002) to 305 (in 181 projects) in FP7 (2007-2013), the latter included 19 projects with Indian researchers coordinating. Under FP7, India was the fourth most active Third Country in terms of participation and in terms of financial contribution (€35.8m) from the European Union – behind only Russia, the United States, and China. A small but significant proportion of this €35.8m was successfully won by researchers conducting Social Science and Humanities -led research.
Nevertheless, international research collaboration between Europe and India in the social sciences and humanities still falls well behind more established science (i.e. life sciences and physical sciences) and technology. This is where EqUIP comes in. EqUIP was created to build on the experience of European Research Area networks, that is, partnerships built by organisations across Europe working together to fund research and foster greater research collaboration. These networks have demonstrated how funders can stimulate and support international collaboration – removing administrative barriers and pooling resources on areas of common interest.
Aims and Objectives
EqUIP aimed to strengthen collaboration by making it easier for organisations to work together, build new, and strengthen existing, relationships build researcher networks and develop priorities on issues of common interest to provide the groundwork for development of future joint funding initiatives. Specifically, it aimed to:
• Provide a coherent overview of current research collaborations between Europe and India in the social sciences and humanities
• Develop best practice approaches and identify challenges for research co-operation between Europe and India in the social sciences and humanities
• Identify opportunities and priorities for future research collaboration between Europe and India in the social sciences and humanities
• Establish networks of pan-European and Indian researchers in the social sciences and humanities addressing cutting-edge research questions.
Strategic Context: Europe-India Strategic Cooperation in Research and Innovation
India’s reputation for research is growing and with it, its researchers’ influence and expertise. Government of India has increased its investment in science and technology and this has resulted in a shift in the European Commission’s strategic engagement with India. Rather than supporting both European and Indian researchers who wish to work together on an issue where Indian expertise is needed, the European Union now tries to secure inter-governmental strategic agreements to co-fund on an equal footing.
The Europe-India Agreement on Scientific and Technological Cooperation (2001) was a major outcome of the launch of the European Research Area (ERA) at the Lisbon European Council in 2000, and continues to shape Europe-India science and technology cooperation. This document defined the purpose and principles of co-operation and was renewed in 2007 and 2016 to 2020. This agreement was based on principles of reciprocity and equal contribution. A Strategic Forum was established to help cooperative activities, identify new priorities and recommend joint initiatives, subject to available resources, which could include jointly funded/ coordinated projects, researcher visits and exchanges between countries and access to data and equipment. The adoption of the European Research Area Vision 2020 in 2008, and the launch of India’s Decade of Innovation in 2010 , in particular marked a shift towards reciprocity in Europe-India research cooperation.
While the value of international research cooperation with ’third countries’, outside Europe, to EU competitiveness remained an important element of the European Research Area Vision 2020 (ERA), the European Union took the decision, in its Horizon 2020 programme, not to automatically fund these third country researchers. Its calls would remain open to participation from researchers from those countries (bringing their own funding) and targeted activities could be developed where cooperation on particular topics was prioritised. However, the only calls on which Indian researchers could still receive automatic funding were through responsive mode applications, that is, applications driven wholly by the interests of the researchers themselves rather than responses to a request from the funder for applications on a specific topic.
The removal of emerging economies from the list of countries eligible to receive automatic funding in the collaborative projects of Horizon 2020 has led to a marked decrease in their EU Framework Programme participation. In the first two years of Horizon 2020 there were only 7 Indian participants, an 85% reduction since FP7 in the number of Indian participants, the number of projects with Indian participants, and the total value of those projects. While Brazil, Russia, China and Mexico were also included in the policy change, the greatest reductions have been in the participation of Indian researchers, and inter-governmental co-funding agreements have been slow to negotiate.
The 2012 Europe-India Joint Declaration on Research and Innovation Cooperation reaffirmed a joint intention to define a strategic partnership with the aim of finding solutions to societal challenges of mutual concern. This built on two joint Europe-India conferences (November 2010, and May 2012) held to identify science and technology priorities and propose coordinated actions, to shape the India-EU and Member States’ Strategic Roadmap for Research and Innovation. The Joint Declaration called for increased in cooperation to be supported by a Group of Senior Officials (GSO) who meet every two years, co-chaired by the director of DG Research & Innovation and the Secretary of the Indian Department of Science and Technology (DST). This group is charged with leading the development of the “Europe-India Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA)”. The renewed Roadmap for Europe-India S&T cooperation in March 2016, which will guide the India-EU strategic partnership over the next five years, agreed to intensify Europe-India cooperation in science, technology and innovation and in addressing global challenges, and welcomed the joint financing of research and innovation projects. The Roadmap, in particular, included the 2015 Europe-India Joint Steering Committee agreement to explore cooperation in the following areas: health, water, energy, smart cities, food security, sustainable agriculture and forestry, marine, maritime and inland water research and the bio-economy, nanotechnologies, and advanced materials. A network of organisations to strengthen collaboration in these areas was established (Inno Indigo and Indigo Policy) which have been directly shaped by the delivery of this Roadmap agenda through funding for research that enables researchers from several countries to apply.
While there are opportunities for cross-disciplinary projects that could include social science and humanities researchers in addressing these themes, the Roadmap does not yet include any social science and humanities led themes. This is, in part, because the agreement is negotiated with the Indian Department of Science and Technology (DST), which cannot fund social science and humanities-led research. The Ministry of Human Resources and Development (MHRD), responsible for social science and humanities -led research funding in India, has not been engaged in this process. Similarly while there have been agreements to co-fund the participation of Indian researchers in Horizon 2020 with the Indian Department of Science and Technology (DST), the Indian Department of Biotechnology (DBT) and the Department of Electronics and Information Technology (DeitY) there have been no such agreements with The Ministry of Human Resources and Development (MHRD), and while some of these calls were required to include social science and/or humanities expertise, there have been no targeted Indian calls in the Horizon 2020 work programme on topics that would be social science and humanities led.
This lack of social science and humanities -led topics in the Strategic Agenda for Europe-India Science and &Technology Cooperation is a significant omission, because it means that the agenda does not accord with other relevant Europe-India priorities for cooperation that might benefit from joint Europe-India insights. The 13th Europe-India Summit, for example, alongside the Roadmap, endorsed the establishment of the Common Agenda on Migration and Mobility (CAMM) between the EU and India, also emphasising the importance of India as a strategic partner for the EU in the field of migration and mobility. The Common Agenda on Migration and Mobility, as a framework for cooperation, was intended to be the beginning of a longer term process towards deeper cooperation on migration, a key global policy area. Similarly research to understand and address many of the Sustainable Development Goals, committed to by the EU member states and India, lend themselves to social science and humanities-led research and innovation, as well as cross-disciplinary projects, beyond social sciences and the humanities, that span more than one branch of specialist knowledge.
EqUIP was established to address and better understand the gap in strategic cooperation in social science and humanities; to better understand the challenges and to identify priorities for cooperation. As such it has developed in a very different way from Inno Indigo and Indigo Policy, itssister science, technology and innovation networks, since, rather than beginning with the themes established through the Roadmap, EqUIP needed to develop new social science and humanities-led priority themes. This development of a thematic agenda was therefore a key aim and required the network to gain a better understanding of the Indian social science and humanities funding environment the extent of existing collaboration and expertise in specific areas. The next section will outline the findings from EqUIP’s activities to gather information to better understand existing social science and humanities collaboration and the Indian funding environment, which has been an important contribution to knowledge on Europe-India strategic collaboration in the social sciences and humanities.
Project Results:
Europe-India Collaboration in the Social Sciences and Humanities
This section provides an overview of the knowledge developed through EqUIP activities of the state of Europe-India research collaboration in the social sciences and humanities (social science and humanities) and in particular the implications of the funding provision in India for international research collaboration as this has a direct effect on who European organisations can work with and what funds are available for larger scale initiatives like EqUIP.
There are high quality, world renowned social science and humanities researchers, writers and artists in India, but data from a database of published research (Scopus) on the extent to which researchers are publishing suggests that the volume of social science and humanities research activity between 2002 and 2015 in India was low compared to that in science and technology, and had a slightly smaller share of the total Indian publication output than might be expected in other countries. Nevertheless, over the more recently period since 2009, India has ranked 11th globally for social science published output, in close competition with other emerging science nations like Brazil. The constraints of the funding environment for social science and humanities has also encouraged cross-disciplinary working beyond social science and humanities, with particular specialisation in social science related to engineering, sciences and allied disciplines, and agriculture and allied sciences, which has some synergy with EU–Government of India agreed research priorities.
International co-publication, meaning when authors based in different countries joint author an publication about their research, is a useful shorthand measure of collaboration. Around 16% of the Indian social science and humanities output was published with international co-authors between 2002 and 2015, reflecting an internationally engaged research community and just under half of these co-publications were with European researchers. Collaboration with the UK is significantly stronger than with other European countries (as with other English language countries outside Europe), but there are ad hoc collaborations across a large number of European countries that amount to more than the collaborative publication between India and the USA, the country with greatest collaboration with India in social science and humanities. Co-publication is a blunt tool for understanding collaboration as it does not reflect the extent of influence of smaller research communities in any one country but it highlights the existing networks with India amongst researchers from the United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, France and Switzerland in particular.
This co-publication data will provide some important to inform decision-making about the demand from a country’s research community to work with India, and potentially to inform membership of EqUIP in future. The European countries co-publishing most with Indian social science and humanities researchers also include for example Italy, Spain, Sweden, Belgium and Denmark.
Europe-India social science and humanities collaboration has also been increasing at a faster rate than Indian collaboration with social science and humanities researchers in other parts of the world. This increase in collaboration with Europe has been a relatively long term trend (since 2004) but there has been a marked step-change since 2012 which may relate to the tripling of national Indian social science research budgets following a Government of India ’Nayyar Review’ Inquiry into social science research (Ministry of Human Resource Development, 2011). This period of growth also included Indian researchers’ participation in the EU Framework Programme of research funding and bilateral national networking funds, and the first initiative between more than two countries, the EU-India Research Networking Projects, which provided funding to build collaborative networks between researchers from India, UK, Germany, France and the Netherlands. This increased investment in social science in India (although still relatively small compared to India’s investment in science and technology) and the growing networks between Europe-India researchers have marked a key moment of opportunity for the development of the EqUIP platform in 2014-17.
Understanding the opportunities and challenges for fostering greater social science and humanities research collaboration has been particularly important since some changes in European Union research funding policy which means that Indian researchers since 2014 have no longer been eligible to receive funding from the EU through most of its funding schemes. Indian social science and humanities researchers have continued to be competitive when applying for funding but the numbers applying have dropped from an already low level (details can be found online in the EqUIP Scoping Report and Final Scoping Report). The numbers of these projects funded without direct funding for Indian social science and humanities researchers have been very low. In this new context it is important to understand what other opportunities and mechanisms there are for building collaborative networks to enable European and Indian researchers to work together to conduct research to tackle issues of international importance.
Early in its development EqUIP sought to better understand the extent of existing collaboration with India amongst organisations engaged in the network. This was later updated so that the Summary report could then include up to date data and information from a wider range of European funders. Details of this work can be found online in the Scoping Report on Existing Collaboration and Future Interests and Opportunities, and Final Scoping Report on Existing Collaboration and Future Interests and Opportunities. These reports revealed a number of bi-lateral (between India and one other European organisation) fellowship programmes and funds for visits and fieldwork activities (as well as the multi-lateral mentioned above). There were also some exceptions such as the German-Indian M.S. Merian - R. Tagore International Centre for Advanced Studies in the Humanities and the Social Sciences, which provided longer term investment in a research centre to facilitate greater collaboration. However most of the initiatives had been social science-led, including, for example: the ICSSR/ESRC Scholar Exchange scheme; the Indian-European Research Networking Programme, (ICSSR, ANR, DFG, ESRC and NWO); the Migration, Development and Conflict programme (ICSSR, NWO, Tata Institute of Social Sciences among others); and Social Science Scholar Exchange Application (ICSSR, NWO); Samenwerking India - Social Science Cooperation India-Netherlands (SSCIN). AHRC had also run an initiative in Design which is not universally considered humanities.
Researchers could also apply to all the EqUIP funding agencies individually for research funding that encouraged collaboration (such as the “Norway - Global partner” (NORGLOBAL) call and ESRC/AHRC Global Challenges Research Fund). AHRC/ ESRC (UK) also used a funding mechanism that enabled researchers from any country to apply for up to a third of the funding for a research project when applying with a UK researcher for their funding. Although largely funding social science, these applications from researchers initiating collaboration independent of any specific national scheme meant research had also been funded in the arts and humanities (especially in history, languages and design) by AHRC, AKA and TEKES (the Finnish Funding Agency for Innovation), and MIZS, including Europe-India collaborations on cross-disciplinary projects that went beyond social science and humanities boundaries. This review of the existing collaboration between funding organisations directly informed steps partners then took to reach out to further Indian funders to start to foster greater collaborative opportunities in the arts and humanities.
Understanding Research Funding for Social Science and Humanities in India
EqUIP has also been able to develop a better understanding of Indian funding of social science and humanities to help guide European organisations’ collaborative activity. The majority of funding for research in India is through central government, the majority of which funds research led by natural science (81% of the Government of India spend on research in 2012-13). This funding is largely administered through the Department of Science and Technology with additional funding from other affiliated Ministries such as the Department for Bio-technology, which have been the organisations that the European Union has had most contact in its inter-governmental negotiations. However, these Ministries do not fund research on issues which require a lead from social science and humanities, such as migration issues, sustainable development or research around poverty and inequality.
The most important source of funding for social science and humanities-led research in India is the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD), and this is awarded to researchers by a number of subsidiary organisations, including: the University Grants Commission, Indian Council for Historical Research (ICHR), Indian Council for Philosophical Research (ICPR), Indian Council for Social Science Research (ICSSR), The Indian Institute of Advanced Study (IIAS), Project of History of Indian Science, Philosophy and Culture (PHISPC) and National University of Education Planning and Administration (NUEPA). Other ministries, such as the Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Planning, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Ministry of Commerce and Ministry of Women and Child Development also invest in research and data collection to inform policy, the last two having sharply increased their investment in research in the last ten years. Although regional/ state governments also invest in social science research and data collection (representing around 17% of funding nationally), and the corporate sector, international donors and individual philanthropy are also important sources of research funding that are beginning to gain ground in India, MHRD remains by far the most significant funder of social science and humanities research. But MHRD is a very different kind of Ministry to the Department of Science and Technology, with a far wider remit across the primary and higher education system, and skills. MHRD’s research budget represented only 0.53% of the overall MHRD budget in 2012-13 which means that it devolves research funding decision-making and to some extent development of international collaboration to its subsidiary organisations.
One of the challenges for international collaboration between countries with different systems is in finding the most appropriate partner. Of the MHRD’s subsidiary funding agencies, the Indian Council for Social Science Research is the main agency supporting social science research (and some humanities as definitions differ), receiving around 65% of the funding for social science and humanities research from MHRD in 2012-13, and an increasing share of funding as other Councils’ shares have declined. It was established on April 15, 1969 to promote social science research by providing funding for institutions and researchers in India and also has a mandate for international research collaboration, particularly since the ‘Nayyar review’ , which recommended an increase in funding to ensure that social science in India was not left behind science and technology. These increases have been important to the support for social science research in India but are dwarfed by the rises in STI funding, but this has also meant a significant uplift in funding to support International Collaboration ). Although the funding for ICSSR has remained static for some years this increase in funding in 2012 has provided a basis for fostering greater international collaboration.
By contrast there is no single funder for the humanities in India. The Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR) and the Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR) were established in the 1970s to promote their disciplines but their budget and degree of international engagement is far lower, and reducing. The Ministry of Culture also provides a small amount of funding for fellowships and awards for researchers and artists, and a budget for international cooperation, but the research budget has also been reducing over time. The limited existing international collaboration in the arts and humanities is in part a symptom of this very different research funding context to the social sciences and presents considerable challenges for the development of joint funded initiatives between countries in the arts and humanities, not least because it would require collaboration between organisations in India that had not, at time of writing, worked with one another on joint projects.
Building New Relationships in India
In order to begin to build relationships with arts and humanities funders in India, EqUIP partners invited MHRC subsidiary organisations - the Indian Council of Historical Research and Indian Council of Philosophical Research - to join EqUIP activities. These organisations had had considerably less experience of international collaborative activities than ICSSR in part due to limited budgets for such activities. The Indian Council of Historical Research could also only fund history which presents some barriers to development of often more cross-disciplinary research initiatives aimed at tackling societal challenges. Nevertheless, they actively engaged in attending EqUIP’s Staff Exchange events and nominated experts to attend all of the expert workshops. These opportunities have created greater awareness and understanding within these organisations of the potential for international engagement through mechanisms like EqUIP. In addition, although both funded by MHRD, these organisations had not, to date, collaborated to fund cross-disciplinary research and a key outcome of this engagement has been the beginnings of conversations between these Indian organisations around cross-disciplinary funding mechanisms and collaboration across their organisations nationally. This collaboration between Indian organisations, and potentially across Ministries if other funders are engaged, will be important for future international engagement at a larger scale, which has been a key finding for Indian international collaboration policy.
EqUIP has also attempted to reach out to non-governmental research funders, such as the Indian Foundation for the Arts, who were also invited to a funder workshop, a staff exchange and a symposium event. This was one of a number of International and Indian non-governmental funding agencies that were approached who are also an important sources of funding for Indian social science and humanities researchers. There are a number of significant international donor investors in research in India and Indian charitable funders, such as the Tata Trusts (which have notably invested in the Tata Institute for Social Science), have emerged as significant research funders, particularly since new Corporate Social Responsibility rules came into effect in India, requiring companies of a substantial size/ turnover to spend 2% of their profits on social development related activities (including Research and Development). While this represents a potential future direction for greater cross-sector collaboration, if these organisations show interest, these arrangements can be complex, particularly when also across many countries. EqUIP’s discussions about the potential for engagement with non-governmental funders are likely to be over the longer term.
Findings and Recommendations
EqUIP activities have created a body of knowledge about the opportunities and challenges for international collaboration between European and Indian social science and humanities researchers on issues of international importance. The review of existing co-publication between researchers and of EU and national initiatives and funding to support collaborative research has in particular stressed the growth of collaboration in the social sciences but the disparity in the strength of collaboration in the humanities. A key challenge for collaboration in the social sciences and humanities, compared to science and technology, is the relatively limited funding available for researchers in India and in Europe, particularly since the change in eligibility of Indian applicants under Horizon 2020. European Research Council and national funding mechanisms (although important in fostering Europe-Indian collaborative research on social science and humanities-led societal challenges) are insufficient for widening European engagement with Indian social science and humanities research communities. EqUIP has recommended that the European Union may wish to revisit the decision not to fund Indian researchers in social science and humanities-led calls given the strength of the Indian research community on topics relevant to international cooperation agreements such as the international Sustainable Development Goals and migration.
EqUIP’s work to better understand existing initiatives to foster Europe-India collaboration has also highlighted the limited funding for research projects to date. With limited eligibility for EU research project funding, an alternative mechanism like EqUIP has the potential to offer Indian researchers an important opportunity to apply for funding to allow them to work with researchers across a number of European countries, while reducing the administrative costs for many European countries wishing to increase opportunities for their researchers to work with Indian experts. EqUIP has been, and has the potential to remain, an important mechanism for building understanding and experience in multi-lateral collaboration (across several countries’ organisations) to facilitate research on challenges that would need to be social science and humanities-led.
There is a clear economy of scale for Indian partners in being able to work with multiple countries through a multilateral mechanism. Large scale initiatives across a number of countries are also important in allowing new perspectives and research expertise to be brought together to address issues of international importance. EqUIP activities established a shared vision across partners to work towards a pilot joint initiative, with a remit to explore the potential for a step-change in collaboration to pilot funding to enable researchers from several countries to work together on research projects of international impact.
A Europe-India Strategic Research Agenda
A core element of the EqUIP activities has been the identification and agreement of priority issues that would most benefit from bringing Social Sciences and the Humanities expertise from India and Europe together. While important that funders identified topics that they could fund EqUIP has also worked to ensure that these topics would be shaped by experts best placed to identify issues at the cutting edge of current research. EqUIP partners, including the Indian Council of Historical Research (ICHR), Indian Council of Philosophical Research (ICPR) and University Grants Commission (UGC), contributed information on their short, medium and long term research priorities. Partner agencies then nominated an expert group to help refine a long list of 38 research priorities ranging from very narrowly defined research questions and problems to broadly defined areas of knowledge. The members of the Expert Group were invited to participate in an online process of grouping of the priorities, using the tool Well Sorted. The Expert Group then met in London on 15th January 2015 to use the results of this online tool to discuss, clarify and define these groupings and highlight issues that would benefit from further development and focus by specialists in these areas. This advice was included in the initial EqUIP Scoping Report. This process identified five broad areas for further exploration through the series of workshops with experts – the EqUIP symposia series.
Inequalities, Growth and Place/Space
This very broad thematic area encompassed issues around inequalities, economic opportunities, environmental change and changing demographics. Their spatial dimensions were included both through a focus on cities and urbanisation and peri-urban and rural areas with an important common strand of issues around the natural environment, in particular the impact of environmental degradation or natural events on migration. Equally this theme included issues around social or cultural ‘encounters’, within and between communities within cities and regions.
Sustainable Prosperity, Wellbeing and Innovation
Access to health, education, sustainable livelihoods and social innovation in their provision were the focus of this theme. The title was also intended to go beyond economic understandings of prosperity and encapsulate wider notions of prosperity, inclusion and wellbeing, to include a range of economic, social, environmental and cultural factors.
Social Transformation, Cultural Expressions, Cross-Cultural Connections and Dialogue
This thematic area incorporated issues around identity, language, shared histories, diversities and diasporas, both past and future. Cultural dialogue and mobility of communities between and within India and Europe were also a core part of this theme, including the emergence of new cosmopolitan societies and diasporas across Europe. Cross-cultural connections through creative practice, religion, languages and literatures were all included in this thematic area.
Power Structures, Conflict Resolution and Social Justice
This thematic area was focussed on issues around conflict resolution and social justice, with some overlap with issues of social inequalities, diversities and gender. This theme also touches on issues around peace and different approaches to societal reform, whether initiated by governments or popular movements/ citizen activism.
Digital Archives and Databases as a Source of Mutual Knowledge
This last theme differs from the other themes in that is focuses more on infrastructure to support the work of researchers needing to access historical records, creative materials, data from surveys and data collected through government and commercial organisations that can be used to understand societal issues. To create accessible databases of printed material, media files of recordings of interviews, past records of social trends and physical habitats, and tribal languages and practices, for example, also needs investment in digitisation. Development of such databases requires agreement to make the information available, and the technology and resources to store, format and organise them so that they can be accessed remotely without infringing privacy, security and other concerns. There were therefore issues around methods, regulation and funding collaborations included under this theme.
The EqUIP Symposia series
Five thematic two day symposia were organised in Rome (Italy), Helsinki (Finland) and Delhi and Gurgaon (India) between October 2015 and October 2016 to develop and refine these themes and foster networking among experts in these areas. Around fifty experts from the social science and humanities disciplines, from both Europe and India, were invited to each event to discuss the opportunities and challenges in each thematic area and to explore the potential added value of Europe-India collaboration for addressing societal challenges. Typically these events consisted of plenary speakers to stimulate debate and group discussions and were chaired by an academic convenor.
A sixth EqUIP Summary Symposium, was held on 25-26 October 2016 in Bled (Slovenia) with a slightly different purpose from the thematic symposia. This event was designed to bring convenors and expert participants who had attended the five thematic events back together to consider the findings, conclusions and recommendations from the previous five symposia and identify areas of cross-over and particular priority for cross-disciplinary research to inform future development of joint EqUIP initiatives. The highlights and conclusions from each of the previous symposia were presented to all participants and attending funding organisation and discussed in particular to identify cross-cutting and distinct issues that had emerged from the thematic symposia. Participants were asked to refine and prioritize possible topics through a voting exercise.
Findings and Recommendations
Overall this series of events brought together more than 200 European and Indian experts to identify and develop the strategic priorities for future research collaboration. In addition the events stimulated networking among experts working in related areas and shared researchers’ experiences and challenges in research collaboration between Europe and India, and developed ideas of how these might be overcome. The outcomes from the last summary event were outlined in a Reflection Report, as they were for the thematic events, and are listed in descending order of priority below.
Priority themes
1. Conflict and conflict resolutions and how they travel(led) across India and Europe.
2. Implications of migration in Europe and India
3. Re-thinking citizenship, state and the social contract in India and Europe
4. Sustainable prosperity, growth and well-being
5. Sustainability and the making of rural and urban living spaces
6. Social movements, appeals to social justice and political alternatives
7. Political economies of inequalities
8. Alternative modernity: new understandings of Modernities in a globalizing world
9. Creative expressions and arts across cultures
10. Innovative approaches to heritage and communities (digitizing sources, preserving heritage, politics of preserving heritage, new methods of digitization)
11. Gender – intersectionality. The changing nature of gender relations in India and Europe
12. Critical studies on data collections and access
13. Everyday creativity and digital culture (technology, openness, digital literacy, innovation)
14. Smart health governance (national and global) and issues of equitable distribution
15. Cartographies of vernacular cultures: language, memory and heritage
16. The critical relationship between education and social policy (private-public sector, teacher’s education, role of the state, ideology, migration)
These discussions did not result in a detailed outline of these topics, but were rather intended to establish where there would be added value in Europe-India collaboration. They were highlighted in particular as they were areas of mutual interest for both Europe and India and called for cross-disciplinary research to address them. These topics have the potential to offer a set of thematic priorities on which to build in the development of future joint initiatives both through EqUIP and through other multi-lateral and bi-lateral mechanisms, and have considerable synergy with the EU research programme (Horizon 2020 Societal Challenges) and with international policy agreements around the Sustainable Development Goals.
Inter-Organisational Learning to Strengthen Collaboration
Review of existing collaboration between partners in the early stages of the project highlighted significant variation in the extent of past and current collaboration with India amongst EqUIP partners in the social sciences and humanities, particularly compared to science and technology. For many partners these relationships were therefore new, and sharing learning across the existing partners and building trust and strong working relationships was important if organisations were to work together effectively going forward. A number of activities were therefore designed to help organisations learn from and better understand each other’s systems and processes, working cultures and share experiences of collaboration. These activities also offered opportunities to enable new funding partners to take part. This section outlines these activities in brief and then highlights some of the key findings and recommendations from them.
The first of these activities was a ‘Joint Learning Workshop’ (15-16 September 2015), which was hosted by the Research Council Norway (RCN) with the support of the Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI). This was a key event for the network as it brought together over 30 participants from 22 existing and new partner organisations from 14 countries. The event particularly enabled organisations to share their experiences of collaboration with India/ Europe and identify potential ways in which the network could support collaboration in future. This workshop highlighted many critical factors relevant to the design and implementation of initiatives which could then feed in to the development of a future funding initiative. These are outlined in detail in the Joint Learning Workshop Report available online. As such this event provided momentum for the development of a joint funding initiative for EqUIP which was then taken forward by a small ‘Funding Futures’ working group of EqUIP partners.
The discussions at the workshop particularly highlighted many EqUIP partners’ positive experiences of working with other countries through issuing joint calls for research projects through other European Research Area networks of funders. These initiatives can be administratively complex for the organisations, and so lengthy to arrange and agree, but the benefits in terms of efficiency and enabling new networks of research expertise to be brought together were highly valued. The discussion groups were invited to assess the various strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats for the development of such initiatives given the different context of working across Europe and India. The strengths and the opportunities identified mainly related to the recognised benefits of multilateral cooperation mechanisms for many partners, the weaknesses and threats largely relate to financial resources and maintaining commitment of partners.
Organisational Strengths
• Motivation of Funders from Europe and India.
• Trust building is a key benefit of ongoing engagement
• Multilateral cooperation widens opportunities for collaboration
• Multilateral cooperation can be more efficient than bilateral - several countries - one evaluation process.
• European partners are able to engage flexibly according to thematic priorities and can draw on experiences of multi-lateral engagement in Europe
Organisational Weaknesses
• Coordination costs high compared to funds committed
• Demand unknown for a pilot call - high requires a narrow theme, low may favour wider
• Limited Indian funding means initiatives may be unbalanced - not all European funding may be spent.
• Social science may crowd out the humanities
• Long-term commitment difficult with variable geometry
• Indian partners/ researchers less familiar with multi-lateral calls then European
• Organisations may have different funding requirements
External Opportunities
• Coordination costs high compared to funds committed
• Demand unknown for a pilot call - high requires a narrow theme, low may favour wider
• Limited Indian funding means initiatives may be unbalanced - not all European funding may be spent.
• Social science may crowd out the humanities
• Long-term commitment difficult with variable geometry
• Indian partners/ researchers less familiar with multi-lateral calls then European
• Organisations may have different funding requirements
External Threats
• Changing political situation: diplomatic relations between countries, economic situation and funding for research
• Limited funding for social science and humanities specifically
• Limited commitment of programme owners
• Multilateral collaboration can compete with bilateral
• Legal issues/obstacles on national and EU level
• Without balanced agenda setting and cultural sensitivity the collaboration might affect international relations
• Building Europe-India research collaborations can be logistically complicated – EU institutions may restrict collaboration to key institutions, Delhi dominance
Given the challenges and opportunities for developing an initiative the Funding Futures Working Group, conducted a survey of partners to identify organisational preferences for different funding mechanisms and thematic priorities which was then used to shape early discussions of the pilot joint funding initiative.
This event also accompanied the commencement of the Staff Exchange Scheme visits between the partner organisations. The scheme aimed to sharing knowledge and experiences, further understanding and build trust among partners and helped in building professional networks and good relationships across the partner organisations, beyond those representing their organisation in the network. A number of EqUIP partner organisations hosted visits for staff members of other partner organisations with a programme of activities for the visitors. Between September 2015 and October 2016 nine visits were organised, two of which included visits to two different organisations; overall 45 different staff members participated in the scheme. The trips to the Indian partner, ICSSR, also included visits to the additional Indian partner organisations (Indian Council for Historical Research and Indian Council for Philosophical Research) as well as the Indian University Grants Commission.
The EqUIP Staff Exchange Scheme Report detailed the development and delivery of this scheme and, in particular, highlighted feedback on good ideas, thoughts or best practices from those attending the visits that they felt they would like to introduce either in their own organisations or in EqUIP. Visitors expressed the importance of meeting representatives from different organisations in order to gain an understanding of the context, approaches and priorities from different country perspectives, as well as a more holistic understanding of how the organisations operate, and in turn how mutual learning and collaboration could be achieved through engagement in EqUIP. It was evident that the visits benefited reciprocal learning between organisations and participants noted that enabling colleagues to visit each other’s organisations and the mutual learning that resulted from this was crucial for future engagement and collaboration within EqUIP.
Visitors were especially interested in learning about funding schemes and mechanisms of other organisations, other organisations’ peer review systems and international and national social science and humanities research activities. In both hosts’ and the visitors’ opinions, the most important things discussed and learned were related to the political context, funding systems, how the organisation was structured and governed, their existing experiences of working with India and learning about the host country and its culture. They also mentioned the value of learning about how to effectively involve the scientific community in developing a call for funding and new ideas about supporting researchers in ensuring their research has influence and practical impact, and engaging communities, businesses and people potentially using the research in from its design through to its dissemination.
In addition to these inter-organisational visits and workshops, researchers who attended the series of thematic symposia were invited to highlight challenges encountered when undertaking research collaborations between Europe and India and for examples and ideas for how these challenges might be overcome. These insights were included in the symposia Reflection Reports and provided an additional insight into the challenges, from the researchers’ perspectives, for funders to address in designing initiatives for Europe-India social science and humanities research collaboration.
Key Recommendations for the Development of EqUIP Joint Activities
This section will not repeat the information detailed in these various reports, which are publicly available, but will highlight key findings and recommendations from them to help practically resolve and adapt to these strategic challenges and opportunities to strengthen collaboration and develop future joint initiatives. Some are recommendations that could be taken forward by stakeholders beyond those engaged in the EqUIP platform or that would require engagement with new partners. Reflection on the implications of learning for the future of the platform is captured in a Summary Report.
Supporting Researcher Networks
• Funding to support networking of researchers could foster greater collaboration where organisational relationships and researcher networks are weaker, e.g. in the humanities.
• EqUIP should look at how it could build on existing programmes and provide a legacy for the symposia series by promoting researcher networks between the countries. EqUIP networking events in thematic areas could build wider stakeholder engagement.
• Researchers may need support to build project teams across several countries where existing relationships are weaker. This needs to be taken into account in the call schedule (e.g. longer time frames from call launch to submission) and infrastructure to support consortia building (e.g. an online database of interested researchers).
• Timing of calls should take account of difference in availability to dedicate time to develop proposals due to geographically different university and holiday calendars.
• Distance learning initiatives could be considered to foster collaboration, such as e-learning platforms, virtual classrooms/skype, as well as exchange schemes.
Supporting International Engagement of Early Career Researchers
• Funding should be targeted mainly to researchers already holding a PhD but projects should be encouraged to include early career researchers, potentially with a mentor in another country, to provide them with the opportunity to gain experience and build international networks.
• Training activities to support understanding of application processes could be considered by national funders and institutions (e.g. how to write a competitive proposal for researchers less experienced in proposal writing).
Development of Joint Funding Opportunities for Collaboration
• Planning for schemes should take into account available budgets for social science and humanities research funding in many of the countries involved.
• A variety of funding initiatives may need to be designed to take account of the limited international engagement in the humanities to date.
• Several EqUIP partners’ organisational mandates prevent them from funding networking/ exchange activities. These differences in what organisations can fund mean that there is a need for countries to choose whether or not to take part in an initiative. Not all partners need take part in every activity.
• Funding should be based on a model of funding which means that each funding agency will fund its own country’s successful applicants within its own normal eligibility rules.
• For managing possible joint calls, a secretariat should be established. The participating countries could take turns as a secretariat
• European Union co-funding should be sought where possible to make the collaboration more cost-effective and support wider participation from other countries.
• Indian currency contributions should be understood in terms of what they buy in India rather than their value in another currency.
• Initiatives could include funds for innovation, particularly if aimed at benefiting the most deprived groups’ well-being, prosperity, happiness and quality of life and focus on using and generating sustainable and renewable energy and resources.
• Funding should encourage cross-disciplinary social sciences and humanities projects and ensure call text is meaningful to social scientists and humanities researchers.
• Although thematic priorities should reflect fundable areas of common interest for EqUIP partners, development of joint initiatives should be informed by discussions with expert research and research users around topics that represent the cutting edge areas of common strength and/or gaps in knowledge.
• The thematic areas for the calls need to be broad enough to attract high quality proposals but at the same time narrow enough to be manageable for organisations involved in terms of numbers of applications and for researchers to feel there is sufficient chance of successful application.
• Non-academic researchers should be funded, where possible, in research proposals.
• Programmes should be of sufficient duration to building sustainable cooperation
• Funders should explore how complexities in gaining visa permissions to conduct collaborative research could be made simpler and less time-consuming.
Sharing Practice to Promote Impact and Knowledge Exchange
• Research projects should be funded because they are scientifically excellent, but should also recognise and support researchers’ activities to have practical impact and influence through engagement and exchange of knowledge with potential users of the research findings, including requesting an outline of planned activities and intended outcomes on application for funding.
• EqUIP could include a joint activity amongst partners in the next phase of the network’s activities to share approaches to impact, influence and knowledge exchange to develop shared practice for future EqUIP initiatives.
• The reporting requirements enforced by funding organisations should be kept to a minimum. Monitoring should focus on knowledge exchange and dissemination of project results, allowing for increased visibility for social science and humanities.
Evaluation/ Peer Review Procedures
• Joint evaluation procedures should always be collectively agreed and funding decisions be taken on the basis of clear ranking of proposals by anonymous international independent peer review panels.
• Evaluation panels could include multidisciplinary evaluation teams, experts who have successfully promoted innovation and specialists with broad views of methods.
• In addition to research excellence, evaluation panels could consider aspects such as originality, added value of collaboration, innovative content, reasonable costs, compliance with programme objectives, activities to foster use and impact of research. Guidance for reviewers should be prepared to help in assessing value-for-money of projects.
• If demand proves high, a two-stage process may be preferable. A potential model to foster new collaborations could be a stage-gated approach (providing seed funding for a smaller project at first stage, which is then developed for application to full research projects). This, however, requires considerable commitment of funds over a longer period of time.
Facilitate Data Access and Open Access Publication
• Investment in data infrastructure and access to data (e.g. digitisation of historical collections, longitudinal survey/ datasets) is an area for potential collaboration to support research able to take the long view in addressing global challenges.
• Sharing learning around access to data infrastructure, open access to content and mutual sharing of international data and information should be a focus for activity and policy development around privacy, data security and intellectual property.
Potential Impact:
Strategic impact
EqUIP has created an unprecedented opportunity for Indian and European social science and arts and humanities funders to work together to build stronger strategic partnerships. EqUIP’s various activities created valuable time and opportunity to build stronger relationships of trust, understanding and mutual respect between partner organisations. The activities have enabled multiple partners to work together to establishment a joint initiative, with an overall value of over 5.5Million Euros, to fund research, which will in turn provide concrete opportunities for excellent researchers from across Europe and India to collaborate to conduct research addressing issues of international concern.
Strengthening European Research Collaboration
The EqUIP network has provided an important means of building on the past experiences of pan-European collaboration across many organisations in Europe to then take this collaboration one step further to enable pan-European collaboration with India. EqUIP has strengthened European research collaboration networks, in particular, by providing a potential route for existing European networks of funders of humanities (such as the Humanities European Research Area- HERA) and social sciences (such as the New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Co-operation in Europe - NORFACE) to collaborate outside Europe with the Indian sub-continent. The platform also provides an opportunity for joint working between the HERA and NORFACE platform partners, effectively bringing those platforms together to work across disciplines. Moreover EqUIP activities have begun to establish cross-disciplinary, as well as cross-national, networks of researchers. A key outcome of the EqUIP activities has been to bring about a joint funded initiative across Europe which has the potential to further collaboration between partners and researchers wishing to work with Indian researchers who have never worked together or only in an ad hoc way.
Strengthening social sciences and humanities collaboration
The scoping work undertaken by EqUIP has highlighted the growth in international collaboration with India in the social sciences and the relative weakness of collaboration in the humanities. Although there are barriers to collaboration in the structure of the Indian funding environment, the relationships built through EqUIP between Indian funders have been important, particularly at a time when the Government of India has been reviewing its arrangements to foster international research collaboration and looks to be working towards more cross-disciplinary structures to make international engagement easier. These changes in the Indian research collaboration landscape are likely to take place over the longer term but Indian partners have noted the stronger relationships built between them through engagement in EqUIP, and a greater awareness of some of the barriers created by the fragmented structure of funding, particularly for humanities, for international strategic collaboration. These are important changes that should not be under-estimated. This learning around the research funding landscape for collaboration has been key to the development of a joint funding initiative but also in shaping partners’ thinking around future initiatives to strengthen collaboration in the social sciences and humanities.
The quality and size of the Indian research social science and humanities research community has also been highlighted through EqUIP activities. Indian partners have supported events to raise the profile of social sciences and humanities within India, as well as in Europe. The pre-announcement of the pilot joint funding initiative explicitly encouraged cross-disciplinary research groups and projects, which again has the potential to provide researchers in these disciplines with new opportunities for interdisciplinary, as well as international, collaboration. In the absence of Indian eligibility for much of the European Union research funding, EqUIP is likely to remain, alongside national, and country to country, programmes, an important source of support for Europe-India research collaboration in the social sciences and humanities.
Supporting and enhancing research relevant to European agendas
EqUIP’s activities have created an opportunity to develop priority themes of common interest to European and Indian national funders and of international relevance. While areas of interest to these organisations, these priority themes were also shaped, through consultation with experts in these areas ensuring they sit at the cutting edge of research knowledge and are, in particular, areas on which there would be added value in Europe-India research collaboration. These areas, shaped by European agendas as well as Indian, have strong synergies with societal challenges that were prioritised for funding within the European Union research funding framework programme (Horizon 2020). Their international relevance and potential impact means that they have unsurprising synergies with internationally agreed Sustainable Development Goals. These priority themes have the potential to inform development of funding initiatives beyond EqUIP, whether through the EU Framework Programme, or through country to country research funding initiatives or other international networks for research collaboration. This research agenda for Europe-India collaboration also has the potential to inform strategic inter-governmental engagement having identified a number of broad areas of potential common interest for collaboration. Until such an agreement could be reached it is recommended that the European Union consider whether related topics in the existing research funding framework programme would benefit from collaboration with Indian expertise, and so benefit from an exception to allow EU funding for researchers from India on those topics. This has been raised at the Programme Committee for Challenge 6.
Better Use of Available Resources
International networks of national research funders have the potential to use national and EU resources effectively to promote collaboration and bring together knowledge and expertise to enable organisational learning and collaboration in a number of different ways.
Avoiding duplication of effort or expenditure
A key aim of EqUIP has been to strengthen relationships between funders to build trust and understanding of existing collaborations to enable better join up between these and avoid competing with each other’s’ bilateral (or small scale multilateral) activities - or repeating each other’s’ mistakes. EqUIP has highlighted the disparate and small scale nature of funding for networking to date between Europe and India, and the demand for collaborative research projects. Discussions at Steering Committees to inform negotiation of this joint initiative have also been important in helping partners come to a further understanding of some of the challenges to be overcome in collaborating multi-laterally. The limited Indian funding available for a pilot initiative meant that potential success rates would be low if there were high demand. For some partners with large, well-connected research communities bilateral mechanisms in these circumstances remained more favourable. However, these inevitably compete for Indian funding with a multi-lateral scheme. It is recommended in the Summary report that while partners may desire a mixed portfolio in building collaboration with India, there may be a need for some of the larger funders/ countries with large research communities to work strategically, possibly through an India interest group, to avoid competing for a relatively small pot of Indian funding for collaboration in the social sciences and humanities. Equally, for organisations with limited prior engagement with Indian research funders, or with Indian social science and humanities funders specifically, the platform has provided an important means to build relationships cost-effectively. For those coming to the platform later in the project it has been an important mechanism to join the proposed joint initiative and test the demand for collaboration from their research community, where unknown, without the lengthy process and significant outlay of establishing bi-lateral relationships. EqUIP has further highlighted the need for resources to be marshalled effectively if research project funding is to be made available to researchers from across Europe in the context of limited budgets and for a coordinated approach to collaboration to maximize the use of both European and Indian resources. The development of the EqUIP joint call for collaborative research projects across a number of countries, in particular, provides an important opportunity to facilitate this step change in collaboration bringing national funds together to fund research researchers from multiple countries to work on issues of international importance.
Building ‘critical mass’ towards shared learning and reduction in barriers to collaboration
A clear benefit of EqUIP has been in enabling not only Indian and European funders to understand each other better, but also in enabling European organisations to understand each other, particularly their strategies and approaches to engagement internationally within and beyond Europe. Ultimately this is important in helping organisations work with each other effectively and designing collaborative initiatives that meet mutual aims. There has been considerable learning through EqUIP activities to scope and develop priority themes and better understand the funding landscape, and at a practical level, understand each other’s systems and processes through staff exchanges.
Lessons have also been learned from the experiences of other collaborative activities with India through engagement with other funders and funding networks, such as the Inno Indigo network of science, technology and innovation funders and learning from Forte’s (Sweden) bilateral call with India. EqUIP has also potentially fulfilled a need for an expert-led strategic research agenda for social science and humanities-led research where there is currently no voice for social sciences and humanities in the inter-governmental agenda guiding European EU-India research collaboration. EqUIP has highlighted some current barriers to establishing a more cross-disciplinary agenda, incorporating the social sciences and humanities, and raised awareness within the European Commission of the need for a more proactive approach to addressing them. The EqUIP thematic priorities, in particular, have the potential to inform such EU-India discussions. EqUIP’s development of a common research agenda across two (sub) continents is also important in providing a global research agenda, with synergies with global agendas around Sustainable Development Goals as well as H2020 Societal Challenges to help shape international research collaboration initiatives.
The platform has also been able to draw on practice developments through the implementation of a joint initiative of the Trans-Atlantic Platform of social science and humanities funders which were similarly engaged in building connections between European networks of funders with equivalents in North and South America. EqUIP also began to explore the future potential to foster links with other European networks of funders working in more specialist areas of research and innovation with synergies with EqUIP themes, such as JPI Urban Europe. This learning and linkage with other funding networks may facilitate further collaboration in the longer term through these other networks.
EqUIP symposia were also important opportunities for researchers to share learning around collaboration with each other and raised funders’ awareness of some of the barriers and opportunities to support collaboration between Indian and European researchers. Many of these lessons have been collated and fed into the design of the joint initiative. This joint initiative will enable researchers from seven European countries to work collaboratively with Indian researchers which would not have been feasible without the work undertaken through the EqUIP programme of activities. From an Indian perspective an additional key benefit of the platform has been in enabling Indian funding organisations to work with multiple partners in other countries, at a senior level, facilitating a high profile collaborative initiatives, contributing to efforts to raise the profile of its collaborative activity amongst senior decision makers in the Indian landscape with confidence and authority.
Innovative thinking: Thinking about impact of research
An additional impact of the EqUIP staff exchange and joint learning activities between funding organisations has been to share learning between partners around approaches to supporting researcher engagement with research users to foster greater use and influence of research impact. Staff exchange programmes included presentations and discussions of approaches; symposia discussions included discussions of researchers’ experiences in engaging with users and recommendations for funders to support such activity; and showcasing events brought researchers, funders and senior decision-makers together to discuss and highlight approaches to influencing policy and practically addressing societal challenges collectively.
With the agreement to develop a joint initiative, partners entered into more detailed agreements on specific processes, procedures and funding which highlighted some differences between organisations in ethos, understanding and willingness to incorporate requirements on researchers to engage potential users of the research even if wishing to support the use, influence and impact of their research. These differences are not unique to EqUIP and partners have agreed that in phase two of the platform partners will further share understandings, approaches and practice in this area as the platform moves forward. Nevertheless, a key outcome of EqUIP has been that Indian funders will soon be adopting practice, to which they were introduced through the EqUIP staff exchange scheme, which aims to encourage and support researchers in their interactions with potential users of their findings and ensure greater impact on policy and practice.
Forward thinking: Enabling Future Collaborations
EqUIP was established to strengthen Europe-India collaboration over the longer term. To ensure its sustainability Coordinators have worked to support the legacy of EqUIP activities, beyond the life of the EU funding and build lasting collaborative partnerships. EqUIP activities has fostered a network of over 200 researchers and established online networking tools to help researchers stay in touch with one another and to register their interest in the joint initiative. EqUIP has also been successful in attracting new organisations to the network from India and Europe, widening the countries from which researchers could benefit from future collaborative initiatives. It has maximised the opportunity for these agencies to build relationships and engage in a collaborative initiative with potential to build longer term collaborations.
The delivery of the demanding programme of events and reports strengthened the trust and working relationships between existing EqUIP partners. Joint scoping of activities and priorities and discussions at Steering Committees have ensured a degree of joint ‘ownership’ of the network and commitment to shared goals not only during the delivery of the programme of work but also going forward. Decisions on topics for Symposia - and the Symposia themselves – have involved feeding in of strategic priorities from all partners, with advice from experts from partner countries, to ensure shared priorities. The production of reflection papers following symposia, which include research questions and issues on which there would be added value in Europe – India collaboration, have allowed the development of a shared research agenda to inform future collaboration. The decision of Coordinators, ESRC and ICSSR, to resource the coordination of the platform for the next two years, and of other platform members to continue to engage in activities without external funding has ensured that the platform will be able to consolidate the achievements to date, working to ensure a lasting legacy and develop the shape and governance of the platform membership to build a sustainable future.
Main dissemination activities and exploitation of results
EqUIP developed a communication and dissemination strategy, to which all partners delivering events and reports contributed through provision of content for newsletters and website and social media items. Partners delivering symposia events in Finland, India and Slovenia also filmed events and clips of the events are available on the www.equipproject.eu website to reach a wider audience. The symposia event organised by AKA was also live web-streamed. Proactive efforts to engage a wider audience through social media were also made by ESRC in the run up to the Delhi and Brussels symposia events, inviting followers to pose questions for the panel speakers. As the two showcasing events were particularly intended to reach a wider policy and public audience beyond the research community, ESRC and ICSSR released press statements/ media briefing to stimulate wider coverage. This successfully achieved coverage in Asian and International Press and was circulated widely through organisational websites as well as EqUIP’s website and twitter account.
The EqUIP communication and dissemination strategy was a living document which was developed in the course of the project to raise awareness through publicising events and activities. The EqUIP website has been a key mechanism to communicate activities such as the symposia and all publicly available reports have been uploaded. Regular news items were also contributed ahead of and following events. These were also included in regular widely distributed newsletters and social media (@equipproject and organisational social media) and disseminated further through organisations’ communication teams to their country research audiences.
An important audience for the EqUIP activities has also been staff within the organisations involved. The experience of the EqUIP partners has been shared and disseminated by organisations through several routes, including the Joint Workshop Report and the Staff Exchange Report which also included case studies of good practice identified by visitors. The staff exchange programme created opportunities for staff to learn face to face but also one of the website blogs was written by visitors to the staff exchanges.
High-level knowledge exchange between partners, with the European Commission, other funder networks and other relevant decision making bodies such as Science Europe – a body representing research organisations across Europe - has been generated through informal interactions in, and alongside, scheduled EqUIP meetings and events but also through meetings and presentations to these stakeholders.
List of Websites:
EqUIP website address: www.equipproject.eu
The EU-India platform Coordination Office is hosted by the Economic and Social Research Council – ESRC (UK).
EqUIP Coordination Office
International Strategy Team
Economic and Social Research Council
Polaris House
North Star Avenue
Swindon
SN2 1UJ
United Kingdom
You can contact the office on equip@esrc.ac.uk. Please be aware that we do not check the inbox every day so please do not use this email if your query is urgent.
Researchers interested in networking with others engaged in Europe- Indian collaboration can also subscribe to a networking mailing list via the website. The Coordination Office will send out occasional news, and news can also be shared between subscribers to the list with one another.
You can also follow EqUIP on Twitter @Equipproject