Embedding Social Sciences in Interdisciplinary Research: Recent Experiences from Interdisciplinary Energy Research

Keywords:

• embedding social sciences
• interdisciplinary energy research
• epistemological barriers
• UK Energy Research Centre

Introduction

Ulrike Felt's article calling for a reconsideration of the role of social sciences and humanities in Europe is welcome and timely (Felt, 2014). It also reminds us about some long-standing opportunities and challenges in interdisciplinary research. From a few points she raises, here I will offer reflections from my vantage point as an interdisciplinary energy researcher with a background in both physical and social sciences, and graduate research experience in Science, Technology and Innovation Studies. For the past eight years (2006–14) I have been closely involved in the research programme of the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC). Over the past five years I was UKERC's national Research Co-ordinator, with responsibilities for research commissioning, management and strategy. I recently led a review of UKERC's interdisciplinary achievements and challenges (Winskel et al., 2014a).¹

UKERC is funded under the UK Research Councils' Energy Programme (RCEP) to carry out ‘whole-systems’ interdisciplinary energy research, and to act as a central hub for University-based energy research in the UK. It was created in 2004 under a five-year award from three Research Councils: the Natural Environment Research Council, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and Economic and Social Research Council. A Phase 2 programme of work was supported by the same three funding bodies between May 2009 and April 2014; a third 5-year phase of UKERC research started in May 2014, again with funding from three Research Councils.

By 2019, then, UKERC will have benefitted from 15 years continuous funding from the same funding bodies—indicating a serious commitment to interdisciplinary research by the UK's primary research funding bodies on a key societal ‘grand challenge’. In practice, UKERC's interdisciplinary journey has been a challenging and varied one, and the Centre has encountered many of the difficulties touched on by Felt, and reported by other similar interdisciplinary initiatives in the energy and environment domain (Anderson, 2006; Hulme, 2006; Hargreaves and Burgess, 2009; Hannon et al., 2012; Longhurst and Chilvers, 2012).

Energy research offers a particular context for the wider challenges of interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. Energy research in Europe has experienced a remarkable expansion over the past decade. In the UK the energy research system has been essentially recreated from scratch, after decades of liberal market-based policy-making dismantled the research system inherited from national ownership. The UK's new energy research system looks very different from its publicly owned predecessor—and from other energy innovation systems in Europe and beyond (Anadón, 2012). This new system has a central role for the private sector and public-private partnerships, and an emphasis on cost reduction and deployment support for large-scale technologies (Winskel and Radcliffe, 2014). As Felt notes, this contemporary style of highly applied innovation resonates with a wider emphasis on competitiveness and urgency in European innovation policy.

The urgency in energy policy and research stems from the challenge of climate change. Two policy commitments have instilled a particular sense of urgency in UK energy policy: the UK Climate Change Act (HMG, 2008) and EC Renewable Energy Directive (CEC, 2009). These two statutory commitments led to the UK's newly rebuilt energy innovation system being driven by relatively short-term goals, i.e. to 2020 rather than 2050, and by a mantra of ‘accelerated innovation’ (Winskel et al., 2014b; Winskel and Radcliffe, 2014). This agenda has raised concerns about innovation governance and accountability; MacKerron (2009) noted the uneasy trade-off between urgency and societal legitimacy in UK energy policy.

Here I will focus on my experiences of working in an interdisciplinary research culture shaped by these forces of energy policy and research under urgency. As well as the increased urgency of energy-related research, a second powerful influence on UK interdisciplinary efforts has been the more general economic and institutional liberalisation of academic research itself, which is associated with an emphasis on disciplinary-based assessment of individual scholars and competition-based allocation of research funds.

Experiences from UKERC

UKERC was created in the early 2000s, at a time when UK energy R&D was starting to recover from a very low base. Its genesis was the UK Chief Scientific Advisor's Energy Research Review Group (ERRG). In calling for the creation of a national UKERC, the ERRG emphasised the need for a multidisciplinary approach: The research challenges are many and diverse. Nearly all cross the boundaries of physical science, engineering, environmental science, socio-economic and socio-political sciences, and life sciences … A multidisciplinary approach is essential in this area as the socio-political and regulatory regime, environmental and health impacts and public acceptability must all be taken into account in the development of technological solutions to future energy supply (ERRG, 2001).

UKERC was duly launched in 2004, tasked with running its own whole-system research programme and networking wider UK energy research activities. However, rather than a single-site national centre, as the ERRG had envisaged, UKERC was created as a distributed centre through a collaboration between eight universities/research institutes. It was also awarded a significantly smaller budget (approx. £3 m per year) than the £10 m per year recommended by the ERRG. Though often referred to as the ‘flagship’ centre of the RCEP, UKERC has been a small and shrinking fraction of overall RCEP spending (Figure 1).

Figure 1. (Colour online) UK Research Councils Energy Programme, annual expenditure by Research Theme. Source: Research Councils UK (2010).

While Phase 1 UKERC operated as a conventional research consortium with a small number of partners across funded over its entire 5-year duration, around half of UKERC's Phase 2 research funds were designated by the Research Councils to a ‘flexible research fund’, allocated through a series of open and competitive research calls. This ‘Core + Flexible Fund’ model—intended to allow for contributions from a wider set of institutions and disciplines—is now widely operated for UK academic research centres.

While the Flexible Fund allowed for fluidity of UKERC's research strategy in fast-moving times, it has also undermined the prospects more ambitious forms of interdisciplinary exchange which rely on sustained cross-disciplinary understanding and familiarity. For example, UKERC Phase 2's more diverse and temporary research community has meant a weaker emphasis on whole-system ‘Flagship’ research than in Phase 1 (Winskel et al., 2014a).

As well as a difficult trade-off between cohesiveness and openness, UKERC's interdisciplinary ambitions have also run-up against the UK's framework of academic evaluation and reward. The Research Excellence Framework (REF) privileges monodisciplinary (and individual researcher) achievement above collaborative, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research. A recurring message from UKERC's review of interdisciplinarity has been the role of academic promotion structures as barriers to more ambitious interdisciplinary research. As one interviewee stated:

There are tensions in academia. Despite the fact that the Research Councils put a lot of emphasis on interdisciplinarity, when your research is evaluated you have to go on a disciplinary-based [assessment] panel. It's much more difficult to receive recognition by academic peers for interdisciplinary work, despite the fact that users and policy makers find it very helpful. The real world isn't disciplinary, so there is a problem with the way academia evaluates itself.

Concluding Thoughts

Many researchers have a keen interest to develop stronger collaborations across the social and engineering sciences, and to develop ‘new kinds of knowledge relations’ (Felt, 2014). At the same time, researchers are concerned about the extra challenges of interdisciplinary research—the difficulty of combining disciplinary identity with interdisciplinary achievement, as well as barriers to funding, publication and career progression.

Any individual research programme such as UKERC's has to work within wider institutional frameworks and reward structures. While UK Research Councils have advocated stronger engagement between the social and engineering sciences, other forces have tended to entrench disciplinary differences. The extent to which UKERC's interdisciplinary successes and limitations echo those of similar past initiatives suggests a lack of leaning-by-experience among funding bodies and programme managers.

As is now well-recognised, extra time and effort are needed for serious interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, and this needs to be explicitly acknowledged and accommodated in budgets and programme design. For example, dedicated resources are needed for interdisciplinary exchange, as well as support for cross-disciplinary ‘translators’. As well as more superficial terminological and linguistic divides, there are deep epistemological barriers between some disciplines, and addressing these mean attending to the hard details of research structures and processes.

Research funding and assessment bodies often entrench research based on narrow disciplinary identities, and in the UK the need remains for stronger collaboration between disciplinary-based Research Councils, or a more radical remaking of funding bodies in response to interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary challenges. Beyond this are the challenges of a highly liberalised academic work culture which tends to under-value interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity, and a wider innovation landscape that gives prominence to private sector entrepreneurship and to relatively short-term economic objectives.

These experiences have implications for researchers, funders and policy-makers seeking to embed social sciences in wider research agendas. Within academia there are still many who practice defensive or hostile forms of interdisciplinary engagement. For funding bodies and policy-makers, the need is for a commitment to interdisciplinarity over time and at a scale to overcome the barriers. While Felt's call for a ‘systematic fostering of comparative epistemology’ may be essential for fulfilling European innovation ambitions, ongoing experience suggests some familiar problems are yet to be overcome.

Acknowledgements

This research was partly undertaken within the UK Energy Research Centre, phase 2 (2009-14) supported by the UK Research Councils under Natural Environment Research Council award NE/G007748/1. However, the views expressed are the author's own, rather than those of their funders or employers.

Notes

1 The project included a review of the existing literature on interdisciplinary energy research, a facilitated group discussion, an online survey and a number of semi-structured interviews with researchers and non-academic stakeholders. Two working papers are available from the UKERC website, www.ukerc.ac.uk. Journal papers on the project findings are being prepared.