This is a CTP of initiative: Living Knowledge ‐ The Environmental Social Science Research Group (ESSRG ‐ Hungary)
This CTP relates to how GP moved back to Corvinus University, and starts initiating science shop activities there:
GP: I think the third happening is that I changed university, back to the major economics university of Hungary in Budapest, which is now called Corvinus University. So of course, I’ve got the motivation to do something at my university, and changed or maybe initiated some science shop like activities there. And fortunately, I find colleagues who are interested, so you know RI [a third person that here has been anonymised], I got her on board, but there were also other colleagues
So slowly GP is convincing colleagues to embrace the type of work they do in ESSRG and science shops. GP continues talking about a critical moment in his attempt to embed the science shop work at Corvinus:
NGO’s were coming, and so now I think that it is a critical moment at Corvinus that our dean attended the plenary and the workshop. See that was a world café like workshop. It was very lively and very intensive and successful I would say, and now it seems that the dean got the idea that this is something nice, also supported by of course an EU project, which always gives legitimacy… a legitimating factor… so there is some money. And now we are really thinking to establish a new science shop at Corvinus during the coming months and years, so hopefully this will not only be financed by the project or project money, but the university will be committed. At least our faculty, our dean, will commit herself to give some financial resources. So far, it seems for example in terms of office space we could get some space, and that’s very nice, because then there will be a contact point for the science shop. And hopefully we can get somebody to be employed who can be a kind of fulltime managing the operational issues, and the doing what it is needed to run a science shop… at the very least.
So a workshop proved to be a critical part of this event. The workshop was attended by the dean of GP’s faculty, and was enough to convince him that a science shop would be a worthwhile activity to have. The international project that the science shops, and ESSRG, participate in was a crucial legitimising factor here.
The international science shop movement, Living Knowledge, played a crucial role, as did the EU commission through the research frameworks:
First, we thought that through PERARES there was an opportunity to bring a science shop training to Hungary and then host it at Corvinus University, and Henk was giving this science shop training and managed the European partners, and other universities and NGOs were attending. So it was a quite nice workshop, and we also involved some of our colleagues to get some idea about this activity… but mostly they were taking part and learning a lot about how to do it, if they want to do it. So she (the dean) became very convinced and very committed, and then now we have a nice opportunity through a new horizons 2020 project…
Henk, a prominent figure in the Living Knowledge network, came to the workshop to train the participants in how to run a science shop. On a sidenote, Henk has during the years conducted this type of activity very often. This served both to do the actual training, but also shows that it is connected to a larger network, and thus lend legitimacy to GP and his attempt to establish a science shop. PERARES, a EU funded project, was also crucial as it gave the funding for Henk to come to Corvinus for the training workshop. And these EU project are in themselves crucial in co-producing the spread of Living Knowledge in Hungary:
I mean that Corvinus they have only one horizon 2020 project, and this is ENRRICH, that’s their first… and this is a good legitimacy source that I can say that “look this type of work is really appreciated by the EU, because there is funds so, if you assist us then we are better in position to get more funds”, and I think that now at least at the faculty level our dean is getting the message.
As can be seen here, the relevance of EU project and the legitimacy they give, is tightly bound to the possibility for funding. It is not the financial resources alone though; it is also the signal of importance or relevance of the research type for the EU commission that it relays. There were also other environmental factors at play though:
Now I am also in a better position than previously, because I have now been working for more than 1 year as director of research for my faculty, so they see a position where I am supporting the deans work, and it seems that because of this position now the main managers of the university, director and others, are taking me more seriously than before. So in this sense if I say something that this is a direction that we should consider, then they don’t say oh come on, but they really take okay let’s talk about it, let’s hear your arguments and so on. And this is a better position so I would say that now we have a much better chance to even gain maybe financial, but at least some infrastructure, support for this kind of science shop.
So the personal position of GP, which has advanced to research director at the faculty, also has a large impact on his ability to embed science shops activities at his university.
The most important events are related to EU projects that ESSRG has been part of, which are also mentioned in co-production:
when Henk was coming to Corvinus, this happened in 2013 July… Corvinus University had this science shop summer school on the first and second of July 2013 and that was still in the framework of the PERARES project. I think that that was one of the last kind of activities because PERARES finished one year later. And now through this EnRRICH we were very happy just less than two weeks ago we hosted an American at our University, Corvinus, and she gave a plenary lecture on science shops and the EnRRICH project, and also an organized workshop on science shop involving not only Corvinus University staff, but students of Corvinus University other university colleagues, and colleagues from other universities, so at least I think 2 or 3 other universities from Hungary were present at that workshop and plenary.
There are two core aspects here. One are the projects in themselves, which bring legitimacy, the other are the specific episodes where people come to visit their university to have summers schools, workshops, and plenaries, which are events in their own right. Another event is a simultaneous development at another university in Budapest:
Another argument which we can use is, you know, competition. That is, competition with the universities in Hungary, reputation or competition of who kind of initiates something which has good possibilities of gaining reputation. So for example, in our workshop one of the major competitors were present, which is Central European University in Budapest that is a US accredited university, so it is not the Hungarian state university […] and this university is considered as one of our major competitors in the Master and Ph.D. level by my university. And they are much better in getting EU funds, and I invited them to come to share their experiences. They are quite open so we have good collaboration in that sense, we share our experiences, and they also tended our science shop, then some weeks ago they already told us that they have appointed so called civic engagement officers at their university. So, they call it civic engagement, and they would like to kind of take it serious this issue, and it made me very happy to learn that they are kind of also thinking in this science shop idea.
The core event here, in connection to the previous events like the summer school, is the appointment of civic engagement officers at the Central European University in Budapest. This has happened in a context of “co-production”, where they compete with each other, and the argument that another university is starting this activity, and may gain reputation of other benefits from it, may in itself be an incentive for Corvinus University.
ESSRG have not experienced overt opposition against the idea of a science shop, contestations here emerge as a lack of support:
Through PERARES and through the EnRRICH projects we can finance some of the colleagues who are also contributing, like RI (anonymized colleague) or other colleagues ,who are involved in organizing and running the workshop and maybe involved in the EnRRICH project. And they will accomplish some tasks related to establishing this science also… but often it is volunteer time… so like it is absolutely volunteering to write a project proposal, it is not financed by the university. So it is… you have to teach as much as others who are not writing proposals. So, in this sense you end up absolutely providing volunteer time as well, but we are also learning that we need some project money. However, to get project money we have to convince the universities to invest… so now we do hope that Corvinus will be more successful than our previous university. Of course, in our research group ESSRG, we are running science shop and science café projects, which finance us and finance all the community service we do, so in the transit project, I did the transition towns, and I am still collaborating with them, and we are planning new activities in the future. And partly my work will be financed through other EU project which we gain, but partly will be a volunteer work, so it is mixed.
The lack of support at Corvinus is lack of hours to use for writing research proposals and doing science shop activities. It is all something they are expected to do on a volunteer basis, even though the university benefits economically from the international projects. Another type of contestation is the financing from the government of these types of activities, which has changed for the worse:
Today we have only one major resource (financial) for this, the so called Norway fund or Norway grant. Norway, Iceland and Lichtenstein established a grant scheme for some EU countries like Hungary to support this kind of community initiatives. So for example the transition community initiative in Hungary is running this Norway grant project that’s why they can survive, but these grants are really targeted to NGO’s and civil society organizations. So I as a university lector cannot apply, and because we are running ESSRG, our research group, as a company we also cannot apply. Only NGO’s and CSO’s can, which I think is fair enough, but that means that our colleagues in the southern Hungary who established this NGO, they can apply. And they are trying to get this fund, but this are you see not national founds, and Hungary had kind of a fund for civil society organizations that functioned quite well, that provided basic money, but recently this right-wing government changed the terms of this financing. Now it is absolutely, I would say, not financing any bottom up citizens movements, but financing established NGO’s who are not kind of criticizing the government and the democracy, so too much participation is not favoured currently in Hungary by national sources founds… this is something dangerous, or look that dangerous…
The essence here is that national sources of funding for community engagement activities, like science shops, have dried out and such initiatives are now depending on external funding like the Norway fund. This is due to the new right-wing government that, according to the interviewee, see too much participation as something dangerous.
The interviewee did not explicitly explain if and what he anticipated about the activities, he however clearly anticipate Corvinus University to embrace the idea of a science shop more than they did in the past, from his description of how the dean and other executive manager at the university reacts to his suggestions:
Then they don’t say oh come on, but they really say okay let’s talk about it, let’s hear your arguments and so on. And now it seems that the dean got the idea that this is something nice, also supported by of course an EU project […] At least our faculty, our dean, will commit herself to give some financial resources.
It has also been a long and very slow process to build up the reputation and legitimacy of ESSRG and their way of working, and it is only in the recent 1-2 years that this anticipation has been building up that it is possible to establish science shop activities at Hungarian universities. This anticipation partly comes from the EU projects, and because the EU through them signals that, this is something that they support and value.
The interviewee likewise did not talk explicitly about what he learned from this development. He however did point out several aspects of importance that will be summarised here. Having a prominent role like being the director of research at a department is important to have an impact, to get important actors at the university to listen to you.
European projects can bring legitimacy to an area, like community engagement. This happens both because it signal the interest and value of the EU, and because it brings resources to the university.
Competition between universities may be a valuable strategy to pressure a university to act, to be a first mover, and reap potential rewards for their reputation.
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