ABOUT

Dr Jack Spaapen received his training in sociology and cultural anthropology at the University of Amsterdam. His PhD (1995) is in science and technology studies (STS), focusing on methods for the evaluation of research in the context of societal and policy demands. He is senior policy advisor at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. His main areas of expertise are societal impact evaluation, research and innovation policy, responsible research and innovation and scientific advice. He has coordinated many Academy projects in these areas, and several EU projects, among others the FP7 SIAMPI project on productive interactions between science and society (2009-2012), and on Indicators for Responsible Research and Innovation, RRI (2014). For the OECD he co-chaired a project on the role of scientific advice in controversial issues in society (2013-2015). He represents the Academy in several national and European networks on R&D evaluation. He co-designed the national evaluation protocol for publicly funded research (Standard Evaluation Protocol - SEP). He is currently working on the development of an assessment framework for the humanities research in the Netherlands.

Michael Ochsner received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Sociology at the University of Zurich in 2014. Since 2009, he has been a research associate at the ETH Zurich in the CRUS-organized projects: “Developing and Testing Research Quality Criteria in the Humanities, with an emphasis on Literature Studies and Art History” and “Application of Bottom-up Criteria in the Assessment of Grant Proposals of Junior Researchers in the Social Sciences and Humanities”. Since 2013, he has also worked at the Swiss Centre of Expertise in the Social Sciences (FORS) at the University of Lausanne as a senior researcher in the team international surveys. His research interests include research evaluation; notions of research quality; qualitative, quantitative and mixed research methods; survey methodology; and welfare state research. He is vice-president of the EvalHum initiative, a European association for research evaluation in the SSH.

Dr Paul Benneworth is a senior researcher at the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies, the University of Twente, the Netherlands, and also at Agderforskning, Kristiansand, Norway. Paul’s research interests are related to the relationships between universities and societal change with a particular focus on social sciences and humanities research, as well as societal change in old industrial regions. Paul’s Ph.D. explored the ways that old industrial regions create new opportunities for economic development through the ways that their existing industries and technologies are cross-fertilised within wider global networks in ways that drive various kinds of modernisation processes, economic, social, political, institutional, and environmental. In 2010-13 he was Chief Scientist of the Humanities in the European Research Area ERANET network Joint Research Programme “The public value of arts & humanities research”. Paul has undertaken a wider range of basic and applied research activities for a variety of funders including research councils, HE funding councils, the OECD, government departments across Europe, the European Commission and a number of regional authorities. He is one of the authors of “The Impact and Future of Arts & humanities research” (2016, forthcoming, Palgrave).

Tim Engels is head of the Departement of Research Affairs and Innovation at the University of Antwerp. Trained in psychology (PhD Vrije Universiteit Brussel), he became responsible for research evaluation at the University of Antwerp as of 2006. He supervises the UAntwerpen group of the Flemish Centre for R&D Monitoring (ECOOM) since 2009. Under his leadership the Flemish Academic Bibliographic Database for the Social Sciences and Humanities (VABB-SHW) has been set up and updated yearly. His research focuses on research evaluation and publication patterns in the social sciences and humanities.

Dr. Stefan de Jong is a post-doctoral researcher at The University of Manchester (MIoIR) and Leiden University (CWTS). He studies university strategies for impact of the social sciences and humanities. Stefan obtained a BSc in Cell Biology from Wageningen University and an MSc in Innovation Studies from Utrecht University. Stefan worked as researcher at the Rathenau Instituut, studying societal impact and evaluation of academic research. As an external PhD student at Leiden University (CWTS) he wrote a dissertation on the relationship between Dutch impact policies and academic impact practices: ‘Engaging scientists: organising valorization in the Netherlands’ (successfully defended in 2015). Stefan regularly hosts societal impact workshops for academics.

Mimi Urbanc graduated in Geography and History at the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia and acquired her Ph. D. in Geography at the University of Primorska in 2007. She is a senior research fellow and deputy director at the Research Centre of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts which is the biggest arts and humanities research institution in Slovenia. She has been principal investigator in several EU and national projects. Her research activities are connected with cultural landscapes, namely with landscape perception, perception of landscape changes, identity and landscape representations. She is the chief editor of the book series Thought, society, culture: Exploring Cultural Spaces of Europe published by Peter Lang Verlag and editorial board member of book series Geography of Slovenia and journal Acta geographica Slovenica, both published by Založba ZRC. She is a member of the Commission for the Standardization of Geographical Names of the Government of the Republic of Slovenia at The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names, board member of The Permanent European Conference for the Study of Rural Landscape for Slovenia, member of the EUCALAND network (European Cultural and Agricultural Landscapes), and a bord member of ISCAR (International Scientific Committee on Research in the Alps). She has recently been a member of HERA (Humanities of European Research Area) International Assessment Panel and Polish National Science Centre for the fellowship program Polonez panel. She has been involved into developing ZRC SAZU's research feedback and amendments proposals to evaluation criteria and system in Slovenia.

I am a philosopher of communication and I work in the field of research evaluation. I focus on scholarly communication, academic publishing, Open Science, and scientometrics.
As part of my research, I try to go beyond the walls of the Academy. Therefore, I write popular science articles and essays. For many years, I have conducted seminars and workshops on scholarly communication and research evaluation.
Since 2010, I have been writing an academic blog entitled “Warsztat badacza” (“Scholar’s Workshop”), where I discuss scholarly communication, legislation concerning the evaluation of science and other issues that relate to the daily work of researchers.