Politics of Big Science and Research Infrastructures Within and Beyond Europe

Abstract

This panel addresses the politics behind contemporary science and knowledge production, that nowadays often involve—and more and more depend on—large-scale infrastructures, instruments and data-sets. It is becoming increasingly clear that individual states can only meet this challenge by joining forces and developing cooperative formats beyond separate national efforts. In addition to that, there is also a need to pay more attention to the interaction between different policy actors and levels, ranging from the activities of the European Commission to organizational and non-governmental collaborations in Europe and beyond. This trend towards a stronger integration of research cooperation in the big science sector also raises new questions crucial to the social sciences. For instance, to what extent do long-established collaboration formats, such as intergovernmental cooperation, still work when terms and types of funding and political constellations change? What patterns of collaboration or competition emerge from the interplay of supranational, national and institutional actors? How does the digitisation of research affect the cooperation structures of scientists and states? And how do recent trends to- wards the renationalisation of research policy and general skepticism towards science influence cooperation in big science? The panel brings together theoretically informed and empirically rich papers investigating these and others questions related to the politics of big science and research infrastructures from diverse disciplinary and methodological backgrounds including perspectives of Political Science, European Studies, International Relations, legal studies, sociology of science, organizational studies, Science and Technology Studies, research and innovation policy studies, history and economics. Contributions discuss diverse empirical cases from traditional laboratories to new digital collaborations at national and international levels.