Philip Lewis

Some good UK science policy select committee sessions to look forward to next week, in both the Commons and the Lords:

🍿 Tuesday 3 Mar - Lords S&T Committee quizzing Liz Kendall, Patrick Vallance and Emran Mian (DSIT Perm Sec). I imagine they'll be trying to get a handle on those buckets (ahem).

Understanding the importance of SHAPE to the UK research ecosystem - MetaROR

🇬🇧 Our latest paper "uses broad bibliometrics to compare the STEM and SHAPE sectors over time in the UK, with comparisons to other countries"

Reviewers find it timely & useful, yet suggest a different analytical approach as well as a tighter definition of SHAPE

👇 Find the full evaluation on MetaROR

How tech turned against women As AI-generated sexualised images proliferate and app-facilitated abuse spreads, we are sleepwalking into a new age of gender inequality. It is time to regulate properly

Must-read of the weekend: How tech turned against women.
AI risks tumbling us into a downward spiral that risks accelerating the already alarming regression of women’s rights worldwide ↘️ giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/...

A shocking indictment of the intimidation and danger MPs now routinely experience.

The hostility routinely whipped up against "Westminster" and "politicians" has a real human cost.

The Bucket Stops Here UKRI’s new funding framework takes a stab at classifying budgets – but doesn’t yet govern research

Bucket theory is unglamorous but very important. @ersatzben.com is forensic here - a must read for those interested in UK research policy
www.ersatzben.com/p/the-bucket...

First-rate analysis.

Strong agree that ‘someone needs to own disciplinary health’ . At present, a fatal flaw of the UK system, centred in England on the separation of functions between DfE (and OfS) and DSIT, is that no one does.

This is what frustrates me the most about the British establishment's stubborn refusal to accept our massive comparative advantage in services.

It's already a key sector! It will only grow with time! Money is already being made!

Think of how much better it could be if it was properly supported.

Especially important in light of today's EPA news.

On how the privatization of climate data is creating a world where the best understanding of risk lives inside corporations, while the institutions of democracy increasingly struggle to insist upon full data and understanding. Essential reading.

Électricité : un rapport confidentiel d’EDF anticipe une explosion des coûts et des risques « Le Point » s’est procuré le rapport interne d’EDF sur les conséquences de la modulation de son parc nucléaire pour faire place aux renouvelables. Un document explosif, alors que le gouvernement s’ap...

France has ended up in a strange position after using some €250bn of tax-payer money to build a fleet of nuclear power stations. Wind and solar power is merrily entering the French power market at prices nuclear production can't match, resulting in huge surpluses of power.

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Understanding the interlocking shifts, actors and institutions contributing to peace and security today - document front cover

The latest round of discussion papers in our Global (Dis)Order programme with @carnegieendowment.org highlight critical interactions that require attention if we are to reverse the worrying trend of escalating conflict.

Read the papers now: www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/programmes/g...

In the Plenary Keynote talk 'Equitable Partnerships in Global Research: From Principles to Practice', Prof Quarraisha Abdool Karim FRS speaks on the five global challenges of our time and that we must tackle these as a global community. #EquitablePartnerships

Science is often funded based on the novelty of an idea, but doing this in isolation can miss out on the importance of the context in which the research will be conducted...leading to limited local ownership, leadership and often reduced impact; we need an integrated approach. #EquitablePartnerships

Professor Safiatou Doumbo explains how researchers are helping to improve community health and nutrition for thousands of children and mothers through collaboration and capacity building in rural Mali. #EquitablePartnerships

"The question we should be asking ourselves is not whether partnerships are equitable, but whether the system they operate in make equity possible." - Prof Similo Ngwenya #EquitablePartnerships

'Travel as research practice'

Prof Jude Robinson shares how unless we invest in hard software and good connectivity for all participants, research partnerships cannot be equitable. #EquitablePartnerships

A colour block banner with the words 'International Fellowships 2026' written on the left-hand side.

The International Fellowships 2026 scheme, run with the @royalsociety.org, supports international early career researchers to undertake a two-year research career with UK partner organisations. Find out more and apply ahead of 11 March deadline: https://bit.ly/3LaMIBC

"Equitability in partnerships starts before the research begins!" - Prof Vilma Irazola, Director of the Institute for Clinical Effectiveness and Health Policy (IECS) and the South American Center of Excellence for Cardiovascular Health., Argentina. #EquitablePartnerships

As we are building equitable partnerships, you need to optimise strengths of each partner.
"The objectives of partnerships should be to create a product that is the total summation of all the good things that come out of a research exercise.” - Professor Tshilidzi Marwala #EquitablePartnerships

'Projects end but networks persist'

"When you are working together as part of a network there is a shared sense of accountability, and in time you will be able to set agendas between countries."- Prof Mercury Shitindo, University of Zaragoza #EquitablePartnerships

Professor Leon Tickly (FBA) shares a case study of a research-intensive Northern University in one of our morning workshops.

"Research collaborations must actively redress the multiple underlying layers of power imbalances in the production of scientific knowledge."

Prof Mercury Shitindo, Executive Director of the Africa Bioethics Network (ABN), advocates for a model of ethics as shared ownership, with African institutions leading ethical governance rather than just implementing external protocols.

What would happen if global south universities were the agenda setters? We discussed how getting to this point would mean a system redesign in Prof Emmanual Ojo's workshop. (University of the Witwatersrand)
#EquitablePartnerships

"Equitable partnerships are a systems-design challenge, not a relationship problem. We need to design across agenda equity, governance equity, and benefit equity." - Prof Emmanual Ojo, Deputy Head of the School of Education at the University of the Witwatersrand. #EquitablePartnerships

In the '(Re)centering indigenous knowledge for equitable partnerships' workshop, Prof Justine Mukhwana Sikuku shares how engaging with indigenous material culture and their custodians offers a powerful movement away from ‘research on’ to ‘research with’ indigenous peoples. #EquitablePartnerships

Prof Ricardo Oliveira, Professor of the International Politics of Africa, outlines pathways to navigate different funding and governance mechanisms in a Brazil-UK partnership.
#EquitblePartnerships

That concludes our live updates from the Second Equitable Partnerships Conference, delivered in partnership with the @royalsociety.org and the National Research Foundation (South Africa).

We will be sharing the outputs from the conference on our website in the coming weeks: https://bit.ly/46kcs5C

As someone who is in an academic department that is positively pullulating with global talent, I would just like to note the gratuitous, excessive emotional and financial stress and strain suffered by talented globals in the context of swingeing visa regimes and hostile environments.

But my sense is that international research funding is going to be rather tight in the coming years and I’m not sure policy thinking on this in relation to R&D has caught up with the geopolitics and is still pretty tech focused

A different question which is a bit unclear is how international funding will play out and how it fits in ‘bucket theory’. Given geopolitics is looming so large right now, it seems very important that we fund a lot of insight into that (which is obviously very humanities & social science territory)

Keynote speech being given at the Second Equitable Partnerships Conference

Great to be listening to the @ununiversity.bsky.social Rector Professor Tshilidzi Marwala give his keynote at the Second #EquitablePartnerships Conference in South Africa