Author: nilsolav

Eystein Jansen, Academic Director of Academia Europaea Bergen and ERC Vice-President, delivered a keynote address at the annual conference of Nordic University Rectors in Brussels on September 23, 2024.

The last few weeks have been positive for the ERC and its mission, especially if the signals we’ve received translate into policies and funding decisions. I am particularly thinking of Mario Draghi’s comprehensive report on European competitiveness and the mandate given by Commission President von der Leyen to the newly appointed Commissioner for Research, Ekaterina Zaharieva. I also see encouraging signs from the work of the Heitor Group, which is shaping the next Framework Programme, FP10, set to be released on October 16. These developments offer a strong foundation to reinvigorate our efforts for excellence in research and to enhance the European Research Area.

Eystein Jansen, Academic Director of Academia Europaea Bergen and ERC Vice-President, delivered a keynote address at the annual conference of Nordic University Rectors in Brussels on September 23, 2024.

The last few weeks have been positive for the ERC and its mission, especially if the signals we’ve received translate into policies and funding decisions. I am particularly thinking of Mario Draghi’s comprehensive report on European competitiveness and the mandate given by Commission President von der Leyen to the newly appointed Commissioner for Research, Ekaterina Zaharieva. I also see encouraging signs from the work of the Heitor Group, which is shaping the next Framework Programme, FP10, set to be released on October 16. These developments offer a strong foundation to reinvigorate our efforts for excellence in research and to enhance the European Research Area.

Mario Draghi’s wide-ranging report on European competitiveness, issued two weeks ago, paints a critical picture of Europe’s current ability to harness talent, drive innovation, and translate research into breakthrough technologies. According to Draghi, the EU-funded research system is too top-down and bureaucratic. He advocates for more ERC-style frontier research, led by independent scientific bodies, and calls for greater investment in this area.

The Draghi report highlights: “The European Research Council (ERC) has been crucial to the competitiveness of European science, but many promising proposals remain unfunded due to a lack of financial resources.” The report recommends doubling support for fundamental research through the ERC, significantly increasing the number of grant recipients without compromising the quality of funding.

In fact, the ERC could currently fund 40% more outstanding projects without diminishing quality or excellence—if budget allocations were increased. Furthermore, the purchasing power of our grants needs to be restored to 2009 levels, when they were last adjusted, 15 years ago.

On October 16, Manuel Heitor will release his report on the next Framework Programme. From what I have gathered, it will emphasize many of the same concerns raised in the Draghi report, while providing more detailed advice for FP10. It will stress the importance of bottom-up frontier and breakthrough research, led by independent, scientist-driven bodies, with a stronger focus on Marie Curie Actions.

Both reports praise the ERC, underscoring the importance of organizational independence and leadership by prominent scientists for these initiatives to succeed.

Guarantees of a “fifth freedom”

In her mandate to the new Commissioner for Research, Innovation, and Startups, Commission President von der Leyen emphasized:

• “You will create conditions for researchers and innovators to thrive, focusing on groundbreaking fundamental research and disruptive innovation, especially in strategic fields, and on scientific excellence. You will work to expand the European Innovation Council (EIC) and the European Research Council (ERC).”
• “You will propose a European Research Area Act to guarantee a ‘fifth freedom’—the free movement of researchers, scientific knowledge, and technology. The aim is to reduce the fragmentation of research and anchor innovation and research into the single market.”

These are hopeful messages!

We are living through unprecedented times. Even before the terrible events unfolding in the Middle East and Ukraine, people were already describing the global situation as a “polycrisis”—a scenario in which interconnected crises create compounded, more severe impacts than individual crises alone. Universities, as enduring institutions, face a unique challenge in these times.

Excellence remains a guiding principle. It would be regrettable if the EU Framework Programmes abandoned the “principle of excellence.” Some believe universities should focus only on certain areas, but I personally deplore such narrow thinking. The fact that the ERC supports all academic research areas is a strength worth protecting. Universities are not called “universities” because they are monocultures.

The ERC Scientific Council remains convinced that the ERC’s mission is more relevant than ever. Focusing too much on short-term results risks undermining future innovation, and our brightest talents will not settle for merely imitating others. It’s crucial to remember that the ERC supports not only scientific inquiry but also engineering across several of its panels. To lead in new and emerging areas of science, we must allow our best researchers the freedom to exercise their creativity.

The ERC was founded for this very reason.

ERC-funded researchers have received prestigious awards, including 14 Nobel Prizes, and have contributed to EU goals such as the green and digital transitions. They’ve made breakthroughs in critical technologies like artificial intelligence and quantum information, and 40% of ERC projects have resulted in patents, with around 400 ERC-funded researchers founding startups. ERC projects also lead to a higher rate of patents per euro invested than other targeted elements of the Framework Programmes.

We do care deeply about the impact of the research we fund, and granting researchers the freedom to explore is the best way to maximize that impact. ERC researchers have also trained the next generation of scientists, employing over 100,000 researchers, mainly PhD candidates and postdocs, in their teams.

If we look at the most significant scientific publications (the top 1% most-cited), the EU world share is 18% compared to 23% for China and 27% for the US. When we break this down by scientific field we see that the EU leads in only two of twenty of these fields, namely history and biology.

In most fields either the US or China has a clear lead over the EU, including in enabling and strategic technologies, information and communication technologies, biomedical research and earth and environmental sciences.

And if we look at new and emerging fields, the US and China have an even bigger lead.

Insufficient to meet the full potential

The ERC’s current budget of €2 billion annually is insufficient to meet its full potential. For the ERC to truly have systemic effects throughout Europe, it was estimated in 2003 that its budget would need to be 5% of national research agencies’ budgets—equivalent to €5 billion today. This remains true.

The final message in our statement on FP10 is that the ERC’s independence is critical to its success. The ERC’s ability to determine how it runs its calls and manages grants must be protected. Unfortunately, this independence is under pressure, as streamlined processes threaten to undermine it. We need to ensure the ERC’s autonomy is preserved in FP10.

The selection process is the heart of the ERC’s excellence, and it must remain of the highest quality. We need over 1,000 high-level scientists annually for our evaluation panels, with an additional 6,000 remote reviewers. Our simple, tailored procedures provide the necessary flexibility, and this should not be hampered by standardized processes across the EU’s entire research framework.

Finally, I urge you—Nordic Rectors and university leaders—to support a joint Nordic initiative at the government level, in alignment with the Draghi and Heitor reports. A strong, united Nordic voice will send a powerful signal and help create momentum in the right direction. Europe needs a concerted effort to strengthen its research base, support excellence, and reduce bureaucracy.

Let’s work together to ensure that Europe’s researchers are supported in a way that allows original talent to thrive.

Many thanks for your attention!

 

The Second Biennial Conference of the World Philology Union will take place at Uppsala University from the 4th to 6th December 2024. The president of the WPU, Professor Jens Braarvig (MAE) sees the mission of the WPU and the Uppsala Conference as nothing less than reviving the discipline of Philology. The conference in December is titled “Philology and the narrative heritage” and will take a close look at ancient texts from all over the globe.

– Today, academics who are experts in Philology, see their discipline being scaled down or disappearing in universities. We have set up the World Philology Union organisation to show the importance of the philological disciplines, says Jens Braarvig, a major driving force behind the WPU.

He sees the study of historical languages as fundamental to other disciplines also, such as the study of History. Furthermore, he sees much of the fantasy fiction of today as allegories over the ancient stories. Braarvig is eager to see the discipline of philology revived so that the modern versions of the ancient stories are not the only curation of the ancient texts available to the public.

– If we don’t have any experts capable of reading the historical languages, you do not have access to the sources, Braarvig says.

– Stories are everywhere. There are stories in the discipline of law, there are stories in politics and also in science. Narratives are part of our heritage. This immaterial heritage is as important as our material heritage, and a major reason why we should study the ancient languages at the universities, he adds.

Still, looking at the programme for the Uppsala conference, the field of philology seems very vibrant with experts spanning a variety of traditions, making sure that the conference programme spans the study of texts from all over the world, from the Old Norse stories to the Vedas.

– Yes, the discipline is still attractive to experts, and they span many traditions, allowing both our conference and the WPU to have a truly global perspective. The problem is that experts in philology don’t have very good working conditions at the universities today.

Narrative heritage

– In the WPU, we see philology as a basic tool to access the narrative heritage, and of course this is a heritage we must curate academically. We seek to define and showcase the vital role that our discipline has played, and continues to play, in relation to the narrative heritage in its original languages, in analysing, interpreting and teaching stories preserved from all regions of the world, Braarvig says.

The World Philology Union (WPU) was founded on the 2nd of December 2021 at the Norwegian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Oslo, as an international association which promotes the philological study of written cultural heritage from all regions of the world. It was established in coordination with the Union académique internationale (UAI), the umbrella organization of all academies of science worldwide, and the UNESCO-related Conseil international de la philosophie et des sciences humaines (CIPSH).

The Uppsala Conference (4th to 6th December 2024) is an open conference with no attendance fees.

Academia Europaea Bergen is a co-organizer of the Uppsala Conference.

Read or download the complete programme for The Uppsala Conference here. 

 

How do the general public experience climate change narratives? In recent studies, MAE and AE-Bergen Knowledge Hub Knowledge Hub steering group member Kjersti Fløttum sees that “the general public is more preoccupied by the tone that characterises climate narratives. They criticize the overwhelming negativity and gloom-and-doom perspectives and request a more positive approach”, our steering group member say. Read the complete interview made by the Academia Europaea Cardiff Hub.

 

About Kjersti Fløttum

Kjersti Fløttum MAE is a Professor Emerita of French Linguistics at the Department of Foreign Languages, University of Bergen. She has had an extensive academic career, serving as Vice-Rector for International Relations from 2005 to 2009 and as a member of the University Board from 2013 to 2021. From 2020 to 2023, she was the Chair of the Board of the Holberg Prize. Professor Fløttum has published extensively in international journals and is (co-)author/editor of several books.

Professor Fløttum’s research interests encompass text and genre theory, narrative structure, semantics, pragmatics, linguistic polyphony, and discourse analysis. Since 2012, she has led the interdisciplinary research group LINGCLIM, which investigates the role of language in climate change discourse. From 2020 to 2023, she led the CLIMLIFE project, which explores motivations for lifestyle changes in the context of climate change, funded by the Research Council of Norway.

In recognition of her efforts in promoting bilateral relations between France and Norway, she was honoured with the French Ordre national du Mérite in 2023.

Read the interview

Your work emphasises the importance of language in shaping climate change discourse. How do you believe narrative structures influence public perception and policymaking on climate change?

“Stories’ are made up of narratives, which have different components, of which complication and reaction are the most important. The influence narratives may have is dependent on the focus given to the complication element (climate change itself and its causes) and/or to the reaction component (possible solutions to curb the consequences of climate change). A narrative in which the reaction component is prominent may have a motivating effect, by providing people with suggestions for measures that could be taken at individual, community or societal levels.Conversely, a complication-focused narrative may induce a sense of despondency and fatalism. In addition, narratives may contain different characters (explicitly or implicitly), such as hero, victim and villain, that may display different distributions of responsibility.”

The LINGCLIM project has explored the role of language in climate discourse since 2012. What are the most significant findings that have emerged from this research?

“We have shown that there is a great variety of climate change narratives, caused by the immensity and complexity of the issue and the interests involved. Climate change refers to a process which manifests itself at scales far beyond those of daily experience, and which can only be understood through knowledge from a broad range of scientific disciplines. If we add to this complexity the fact that climate change is a phenomenon that goes well beyond the geophysical domain, to encompass the social, political, ethical, cultural and communicational, then any discourse on climate change is a simplification.We have also found, through the approach of linguistic polyphony, that climate narratives are particularly multi-voiced, with both explicit and implicit voices. With different voices come different values and interests. It has been particularly interesting to reveal how hidden voices can adopt, refute or concede other narrative voices within the same text.”

How do you ensure communication about climate change is both scientifically accurate and accessible to a general audience?

“As linguistics researchers, we cannot ensure scientific accuracy, but our cross-disciplinary approach of including climate researchers helps to avoid inaccuracy. With regards to accessibility to the general public, we have to enter into a dialogue with different segments of the population. For example, in a study where we included students from upper-secondary school, they told us that they found the relation between global and local changes particularly difficult.However, what we see in our most recent studies is that the general public is more preoccupied by the tone that characterises climate narratives. They criticise the overwhelming negativity and gloom-and-doom perspectives and request a more positive approach, pointing at possible solutions and where they can contribute.”

What do you see as the biggest challenges and opportunities for the next generation of researchers in climate linguistics?

“It will be important to focus on the importance of individual action and individual voices. There is increasing interest in who should act, as well as in what should be done to avoid or mitigate the most serious consequences. Clearly, international and national agents are needed to develop policies and implement changes, but individuals are also expected to contribute, especially through lifestyle change. A challenge will be to change the excuse of , “What I do will not have any effect” into an understanding that, “You matter more than you think”.We have seen a trend, both in psychological studies and public debates, that preferences are oriented towards more positive language, with an objection to negative and alarming language, which may demotivate people from engaging in climate action. This tendency should encourage communicators to strike a balance between alarming and encouraging people, when the aim is to motivate them towards climate action.As the consequences of climate change manifest globally, it’s also important to study its linguistic representations in relation to phenomena such as technological innovation, energy policies, armed conflicts, hunger, migration, as well as the destruction of nature and wildlife habitats.”

 

For the University of Bergen (UiB) and for the Academia Europaea Bergen Hub, the seminar and ERC board meeting in Bergen on 26th-27th June marked both the end of the first half of 2024 and the beginning of summer. It also concluded a very active season for the AE Bergen Hub.

Our Academic Director Eystein Jansen, who is also the Vice-President for Physical Sciences and Engineering at the ERC, played a key role in bringing the ERC Board to our hometown of Bergen at the close of the spring semester.

“Frontier research is key to securing Europe’s role in the world, in terms of providing more innovations in society, solving global challenges and securing democratic processes. It has been said that that the creation of the ERC is the best European innovation of recent times, and I think I subscribe to that view.” Eystein Jansen said in his welcome speech at the meeting.

Science diplomacy during crises

In 2024, Academia Europaea Bergen has focused extensively on mapping the conditions for scientific cooperation and science diplomacy during geopolitical crises, with a special focus on Arctic relations. Our report The Future of Science Diplomacy in the Arctic, published in 2023, has led to the Rethinking Arctic collaboration project, funded by a 400 000 NOK grant from UArctic. The project team includes renowned scientists from Europe, Canada and the USA.

The Rethinking Arctic Collaboration project was presented at the Arctic Circle Berlin Forum, on 8^th May providing an opportunity for team members to meet in person. The project’s aim is to engage with stakeholders and produce a comprehensive report. Outreach is important, and our proposal for an event at the 2024 Arctic Circle Assembly in Reykjavík, Iceland, from 17th-19th October, was recently accepted amidst strong competition.

Academia Europaea Bergen is committed to expanding our work in Science Diplomacy and Arctic Relations. We have submitted a pre-application for a grant from Nordforsk to fund a 3-4 year project titled Arctic knowledge and knowledge systems in flux – threats and coping strategies for a sustainable Arctic. If awarded, this project will be a truly Nordic effort, with partners from Norway, Finland and Sweden, as well as Trans-Atlantic connections including experts from Canada and the US.

In addition to these major projects, spring 2024 saw Academia Europaea Bergen continue to co-organise a well-established meeting series (mainly held in Norwegian) together with the Bergen offices of the Norwegian Academy of Technological Sciences (NTVA Bergen) and The Norwegian Society of Graduate Technical and Scientific Professionals (Tekna Bergen). Other collaborations included the Horizon Lectures series at UiB and the Arctic Frontiers Conference.

With this summary of our activities at Academia Europaea Bergen, we wish all Members, collaborators and friends a nice summer!