After an extended time at SwissCore over the summer, we bid farewell to our Junior Advisor for Research, Noah Stanton.
“At such a pivotal time in the EU R&I sector, as negotiations get underway on the next Framework Programme, I leave SwissCore after three months on the research dossier with a full notebook and a lot to think about.
After finishing my thesis on how R&I stakeholders’ narratives shift in response to state steering in science, I came back to Brussels in June to watch that shift play out in real time, and to see how researchers, funders and civil society respond to it, has been very informative. Through attending events, reading reports and engaging with state actors, scientific representatives and research organisations, my experience at SwissCore has given me a view of how the pillars that have underpinned European research’s scientific contract are being tested. Amid a changing global order and growing concern about foreign interference, it has become clear that how we think about science is shifting. Vannevar Bush, an engineer who directed U.S. wartime research during WWII, laid out this vision in his 1945 report Science, The Endless Frontier, which became the founding blueprint for postwar science funding. Bush’s 1945 settlement was built on the idea of ‘long-term, unplanned benefits’, and the crux is the unplanned part: the pull now is towards planning and measuring benefits of science in advance, for better and for worse. Being able to watch this debate unfold at this inflection point, from a Swiss vantage point, has been a privilege, and one I’ll keep thinking about once I’m back in Switzerland.
None of this, though, would have meant nearly as much without the team. I’m sincerely grateful to SwissCore for making my time in Brussels such a good time. For the conversations that helped me make sense of what I was reading and hearing, for the patience in bringing me up to speed on a dossier I was new to, and for just being genuinely good company along the way.
A la prochaine!“