Merli Tamtik Despite long-lasting resistance from the member-states and the unwillingness to yield power ‘naturally’ to the supra-national level (Gornitzka, 2009), the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Research and Innovation has established itself as a leader in coordinating European research policy. How do we explain this emerging role of the European Commission in shaping European research […]

Inga Ulnicane ‘Crisis should not be wasted’. Since the beginning of the global economic crisis in 2008, this idea has been repeated many times suggesting that crisis should rather be used as an opportunity for innovative solutions and necessary reforms. One of such potential changes emphasized by European institutions has been prioritization of research and […]

Mari Elken and Jens Jungblut On the 3rd and 4th of March 2016, the European Research Area collaborative research network (CRN) had its final workshop at the Directorate General for Research & Innovation of the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium. Building on the diverse activities and encompassing research that has been conducted within the framework […]

Meng-Hsuan Chou and Pauline Ravinet Higher education is undeniably global. But this did not prevent interested policy actors, meeting on the occasion of the 650th anniversary of the University of Vienna in 2015, to emphasise the significance of the global and international dimension, as their colleagues have done at the 800th anniversary of the University […]

Filipa M.Ribeiro What do subjects like personalized learning, curriculum reforms, research agendas and institutional frames have in common? Interdisciplinarity. Whether we discuss the duality of vocational versus general education or the impact of ideologies on research, interdisciplinarity is an in-between topic. Interestingly enough, it is often overlooked even if interdisciplinarity is one of the most […]

Albert Sanchez Graells One of the elements implicit in the on-going discussion about higher education reform in England concerns the extent to which changes in the funding and governance structure of Higher Education Funding Council for England HEFCE (to be transformed into the Office for Students, or any other format that results from the consultation run […]

Julia Metz Day by day, the European Commission consults with more than 30,000 experts that convene in about 1,000 expert groups. I argue that in order to understand the ubiquity of expert groups we need to look at how and why the European Commission uses its expert groups in the policy process. In my new […]