Latest Blog Posts

How do new technological developments influence security in Europe? What role do drones, artificial intelligence and social media play in contemporary European society and security? And what to expect from recent trends in European Union’s (EU) security policy such as plans to fund defence research? These were some of the questions addressed at the workshop […]

What role do universities play in regional development? How university roles in ‘periphery’ differ from university roles in ‘the core’? What are similarities and differences between universities in Northern and Central Europe? These are some of the questions addressed in a new book Higher Education and Regional Development: Tales from Northern and Central Europe edited […]

Myroslava Hladchenko During the last decades, the development of the knowledge economy in Western societies has significantly changed both the roles played by universities and the relationship between the university, industry and government, resulting in the emergence of the Triple Helix (Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff 2000) as one of the global models of world society (Meyer […]

Martina Vukasovic This year’s ECPR (European Consortium of Political Research) General Conference took place at the University of Hamburg (Germany) August 22-25. The conference included 520 panels on a wide array of topics and representation from more than 2,000 academics from around the world. The ECPR Standing Group on the Politics of Higher Education, Research and Innovation, for […]

Meng-Hsuan Chou, Jens Jungblut, Pauline Ravinet, and Martina Vukasovic In this thematic issue of Policy and Society (all contributions are openly accessible), we highlight the multi-level, multi-actor, and multi-issue (the ‘multi-s’) nature of public policy using the case of higher education policies. We begin with an overview of how the global shift towards knowledge-based economies […]

Martina Vukasovic The 2016 edition of the General Conference of ECPR (European Consortium for Political Research) took place in Prague, 7-10 September 2016. Approximately 2000 participants presented their most recent work in political science, policy analysis, public administration and related areas of inquiry in almost 70 different sections. The newly formed ECPR Standing Group on […]

Meng-Hsuan Chou In July 2015, UACES’s (The Academic association for contemporary European studies) European Research Area collaborative research network (CRN) held its second workshop at the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) in Cambridge. Knowledge policies continue to be at the forefront of contemporary global politics. There is an accepted belief among policymakers that […]

Anete Vītola In my paper, “Innovation policy mix in a multi-level context: The case of the Baltic Sea Region countries”, I analyze how multi-level innovation policy mixes function in the six countries of the Baltic Sea Region – Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The paper summarizes findings of my PhD thesis research on […]

Isaac Kamola In recent decades the world has witnessed massive expansion of higher education. The total number of universities is continuing to expand, as is the total percentage of the world’s population receiving college degrees.[1] Many governments, most notably in the Middle East and Asia, are spending large amounts of money on higher education in […]

Corina Balaban and Susan Wright How has doctoral education been changing in Europe and the U.S? Why, and what are the implications for researchers, institutions and wider society? Two experts opened this debate at the start of a project to train early stage researchers Universities in the Knowledge Economy (UNIKE). Prof. Pavel Zgaga from the […]