Research group: Society, Environment and Culture

17.3 Research group: Society, Environment and Culture

The research group Society, Environment and Culture is a continuation/amalgamation of several previous research groups that have existed at the Rokkan Centre since about 2005. It consists of 12 senior and junior researchers, half of whom are subject to the SAMEVAL evaluation. The research focus covers the social, cultural and political aspects of gender and equality, parenthood and family relations, climate, migration and integration, local, regional and institutional history and development.

The Society, Environment and Culture group builds on externally funded, project-based research typically involving two or more members from Uni Research Rokkan Centre and/or other national/international partners. It is one of three research groups at the Uni Research Rokkan Centre, and has been led by Simon Neby since 2016. It is an interdisciplinary group, consisting of political scientists as well as scholars specialising in history, cultural studies, anthropology, media studies, sociology and geography. The institutional SWOT assessment suggests that the organisational structure is flexible and targeted toward prompt action. In practice, the research leader has three responsibilities: academic leadership, development/appraisal talks with personnel, and assuring that all members of the group have sufficient funding.

The group’s research is well grounded in the Uni Research Rokkan Centre’s overall strategic goals, and contributes to its two main strategic research priorities (see above). The focus of the research is wide, ranging from the social and cultural aspects of gender to local and regional development, including historical studies, and societal aspects of mitigation of and adaptation to climate change. These topics relate to the Uni Research Rokkan Centre’s strategy of carrying out research on innovation, leadership and the organisation of solutions to societal challenges and research on future healthcare and welfare challenges. There is considerable research collaboration, both within the institute itself and the neighbouring University of Bergen and with other national and international partners.

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Attracting funding is a main concern, and funding comes from the RCN, regional research funds and public authorities and municipalities. Given the group’s different research topics, there should be possibilities within Horizon 2020, but this has not materialised so far and would require considerable new effort. The SAMEVAL interviews confirmed that becoming partners in EU projects is one way of gaining experience. According to the self-assessment, there is excellent administrative support for the development of research projects.

Library facilities and access to databases are provided through cooperation with the University of Bergen, and the group also benefits from this cooperation in terms of access to the Digital Social Science Core Facility and the Norwegian Citizen Panel.

The group complies with the Rokkan Centre’s recruitment policy, hiring both PhD students and postdocs for funded research projects and senior researchers largely from Norwegian academia.

International experience is prioritised, but not always necessary since many projects require fluency in Norwegian. Career development in the group also follows the institute’s policy in this field, encouraging further academic promotion and affiliation to universities. Researchers can also apply to the institute for writing periods. Funding for training that is relevant to the group’s research is provided when needed, including leadership and project management courses for projects leaders. Looking at the group’s CVs, all but one of the senior researchers has a PhD degree, one is a research professor and two are associate professors, suggesting general high competence. The career paths follow the same criteria as the university.

The group consists of both senior and more junior researchers, men and women, with some of the senior members also being employed part-time at a university. At the time of the self-assessment, the recruitment of a PhD student and a postdoc was under way. Mentoring and training of PhD students is currently done in collaboration with the University of Bergen.

Opportunities for national and international research networking – such as participation in conferences and workshops – generally come with research projects. The institute has a clear policy to promote national and international networking, through both funding for training courses and encouraging international experience, such as participation in international conferences, which suggests that this aspect is sufficiently prioritised.

The group is highly interdisciplinary and draws on several social science and humanities disciplines.

This is appropriate given the research focus on broader issues concerning gender, environment, climate, societal planning etc., often analysing historic societal developments within these areas.

Several of the publications represent interdisciplinary research approaches, which reflects the diversity of the research group and is appropriate to the research topics. Many of the research areas targeted by this group are suited to multidisciplinary approaches. For example, some of the climate policy research is carried out in interdisciplinary teams that include planners and linguists, and the ongoing research on ethnic issues and indigenous minority relations mentioned in the self-assessment crosses over to the humanities.

Research productivity is reasonably even judging from the CVs of the researchers in this group, although none of them has a very impressive record. During the period 2012–16, eleven group members published about 1.5 peer-reviewed articles, book chapter or monograph per year on average. In terms of publishing, international peer-reviewed outlets dominate – and are preferred - but there are also examples of other dissemination outlets, depending on the specific research

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projects. The vast majority of the best publications by group members are published in Level 1 outlets.

Only 21 % of the group members’ three best publications are published in Level 2 outlets.

The seven submitted publications are generally of fair quality, using relevant theoretical frameworks for the respective research questions, and most contribute to theoretical development within the different research fields. The majority of them are published in good international journals, suggesting adequate originality and contribution, although only a few are published in top-level publication outlets, as only two are in Level 2 journals.

However, there are not many shared themes, neither theoretically nor in terms of research methods.

For example, the evolution of narratives about ‘us’ and ‘them’ in urban transformations used focus group discussions to identify the different discourses, while citizens’ opinions about climate change used quantitative survey methods. Furthermore, one article used comparative analysis within an organisational theory framework to focus on accountability arrangements in performance management models of hospital policy, while another used gender regimes to explore women’s mobilisation and bodily rights in Turkey and Norway.

However, the publications do reflect the diversity of perspectives within this research group, and represent the stated themes that this group wishes to pursue. For example, the group’s work on indigenous policies and developments in the High North and various aspects of climate change mitigation and adaptation are substantive contributions (public opinion patterns, cap-and-trade arrangements, the application of downscaled climate modelling in local settings, organisational coordination, decision-making barriers and facilitators of effective knowledge use). However, this diversity also makes the group very heterogeneous, which could be a problem in terms of getting sufficient feedback from the group, for example when discussing research ideas, papers in progress and funding proposals.

Due to the considerable variation in theoretical perspectives and empirical foci, it is quite difficult to assess the group’s publications as a whole, especially for a Political Science evaluation. We would rate the overall research quality of the group as between fair and good.

The group is firmly embedded in national and international research networks, even though the selected publications are mainly produced by the researchers from the group itself rather than through collaborative work. There is good reasoning about how the group takes part in different research collaborations, notably with colleagues from the University of Bergen (which also ‘owns’ the institute) but also with other partners nationally and internationally. A long list of national and international collaborations is provided in the self-assessment. The interviews clarified that collaboration is pursued in the form of co-authoring, organising panels and workshops at international conferences and supporting research proposals. The group is active in international conferences and national networks, such as the Norwegian network for organizational research (NEON, organized from the Rokkan centre), Nordic Migration Research and the Norwegian network for migration researchers.

UNI Research Rokkan Centre researchers do not generally have teaching responsibilities, but some of them are affiliated to universities or give guest lectures. Group members also contribute to exam evaluation committees, and supervision at master’s and PhD level, and have co-authored publications that are on universities’ course reading lists within social science and humanities.

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The research issues that this group covers are of high topical relevance, although it is not clear how and to what extent the research results are communicated and/or whether the researchers are involved with societal actors in the pursuit of their research. The institute’s assessment of audiences suggests that only a minor share (5%) of publications are geared to national, non-academic audiences, and 20% to non-academic international audiences.

The impact case study ‘Balanse’ describes the effect of a particular research project on Gender Balance in Senior Positions and Research Management, which has played an important role in raising awareness of gendered processes in academia and in society at large. This is claimed to have has an impact on both Norwegian national policymaking and on Norway’s methods for promoting gender balance in research and innovation in relation to Horizon 2020, the development of ERA and Science Europe. Several reports have been produced that target different audiences, and the ideas from this research are widely spread to relevant actors. At this point, however, the ‘real’ impact of ‘Balanse’ has not been fully assessed.

The research focus of this group is highly diverse, covering social, cultural and political aspects of gender and equality, parenthood and family relations, climate, migration and integration, local, regional and institutional history and development. The group is highly interdisciplinary and draws on several social science and humanities disciplines. The research topics are central to the Rokkan Centre’s research policy strategy, and much of the research is closely linked to the University of Bergen through various established collaborations. Funding is a constant challenge, and the current portfolio only has funding from Norwegian sources, even though the group is firmly embedded in national and international research networks. The research is of fair scientific quality, is published in good international and national journals and contributes both empirically and theoretically to the advancement of the respective research areas. However, little research is published in top journals.

The research issues this group covers are of high topical and societal relevance, but it is not clear how and to what extent the research results are communicated and/or whether the researchers are involved with societal actors in the pursuit of their research.

Assessment of research group: 3 - good

Although the research quality is fair, it is not excellent, and there is room for improvement. The research group seems to be too diversified with respect to having sufficient collegial interaction around members’ presentation of research ideas, papers in progress and funding proposals, as well as obtaining sufficient and qualified feedback that could promote research quality. And it might not be an optimal research environment for PhD students and young researchers. It could be worth considering splitting up the group and developing new, more homogeneous research groups in collaboration with colleagues with more similar research interests in neighbouring departments at UiB and elsewhere.

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