Inga Ulnicane What is the purpose of developing and using Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Is it to boost economic growth and competitiveness? Or should it contribute to tackling grand societal challenges and achieving Sustainable Development Goals in areas such as health, environment and energy? Can AI contribute to the both?   I examine these questions in […]

Anna-Lena Rüland The world has seen a fair share of democratic backsliding in recent years, for example in countries like Turkey, the Philippines and Russia. Science diplomacy is often seen as a means to continue some sort of engagement with such regimes. Although it sounds great in theory, we do not yet know how exactly […]

Mitchell Young While, as the name of this blog reflects, knowledge has become a central concern in European policymaking internally, it has not made the same inroads into the EU’s external policy discourses. This neglect of knowledge in the field of international relations is not limited to the EU, but given the European policy context, […]

Inga Ulnicane ‘… Europe is a unique aspiration. […] It is an aspiration of a world full of new technologies and age-old values’, Ursula von der Leyen, then incoming President of the European Commission, wrote in her political guidelines in 2019. Since then questions of new technologies and European values have been at the forefront […]

Nicolas Rüffin In a recent paper, Simon Marginson (2021) analyzes four competing narratives commonly used to explain the growth of global science. He concludes that each of the predominant narratives—growth of networks, international arms races, global markets, and centre-periphery models—falls short from fully explaining all facets of the phenomenon of global science. Consequently, Marginson calls […]

Pradeep Singh and Bowen Xu The European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) had its second virtual General Conference held between 30th August – 3rd September 2021. This year ECPR has attracted over 2,400 scholars worldwide participating in 66 sections covering a wide range of topics and presentations. For the ECPR Standing Group on Knowledge Politics and […]

Alexander Mitterle Working in academia comes with adapting to different timeframes: some universities use semesters, others quarters or terms. A course at a German university can be timed in semester weekly hours (SWS) or in credit points. In both cases they differ – with a usual time-span of 45 minutes – from the U.S. equivalent: […]