Public Seminar: What do research funders actually do? And how could they do it better?

Viewed from one perspective, research funders run a “service factory”, a process that seeks to turns grant applications into research grants and rejection letters, with efficiency and fairness as prime goals. Viewed from another perspective, research funders are investors, seeking to identify the highest potential intangible investments, where the returns of different potential projects are highly heterogenous. Different proposals for reform of the research funding are predicated on different – usually unstated – assumptions about what research funders are actually doing.

This talk offers a framework for how to think of what research funders do, together with observations on what this means for different reform proposals, informed by emerging findings from the UK Metascience Unit, the R&D Missions Accelerator Programme, and the wider field of metascience.

About the speaker:
Stian Westlake has a decade’s experience of leading research funding organisations. He is currently Executive Chair of the Economic and Social Research Council, part of UK Research & Innovation. Previously, he was Executive Director of Research and Policy at Nesta, the UK’s national foundation for innovation, and as adviser to three UK science and universities ministers. He is co-author of “Capitalism Without Capital” and “Restarting the Future”, two books about the economics and politics of intangible investment.

Chair: Professor Rachel Brooks