Igniting the social sciences: A report to the central SPARK/Sbarc team and management board

Quinn, Katherine and Lewis, Jamie ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1065-6017 2024. Igniting the social sciences: A report to the central SPARK/Sbarc team and management board. [Project Report]. Cardiff: SPARK.

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Abstract

Igniting the Social Sciences reports on aspects of an ethnographic research project undertaken at Cardiff University’s Social Science Research Park (SPARK|Sbarc) as they pertain, primarily, to the interests of its foundational team of Directors and strategic research staff. These aspects relate to an analysis of the initial development of SPARK’s key ambition to foster collaboration and innovation across Social Science allied disciplines and between academia, industry, and the third sector. We draw from 50 mobile interviews as well as participant observation in the SPARK building. Having opened its doors in March 2022, the report concentrates necessarily on SPARK’s ‘early days’, and should therefore be read as a snapshot. It is structured around three key lenses, or, layers, that mirror the imagery of the building itself, moving from low to high. These layers are: (i) the building’s ‘groundfloor’ which provides an ethnographic account of the everyday encounters, materialities, and rhythms of the project as a built space; (ii), the ‘workplace’, which reports on the early experiences of collaborative research practices and cultures, and describes how such initiatives are differentially experienced according to contract security and seniority; (iii), ‘the rooftop’, which, using a Science and Technology Studies (STS) framework, looks out beyond SPARK to its potential implications on the future of Social Science research, and the contemporary university. Overall, we recognise the considerable achievements of SPARK (so far) and draw out early successes in terms of: its contribution to workplace wellbeing for (many) insecurely employed staff members, its development of diverse collaborative practices: formal and informal, fast and slow, academic and professional services, interpersonal and infrastructural; and its early fostering of ‘Mode 2’ orientated Social Science. We also draw out the practical and conceptual challenges to each of these plaudits: the tiered nature of collaboration, the continuation – in part – of hierarchy in a horozontilist project, and the barriers to its mission posed by the broader – seemingly inescapable – paradigm of the ‘funded project’.

Item Type:	Monograph (Project Report)
Status:	In Press
Schools:	Business (Including Economics) Psychology Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Publisher:	SPARK
Last Modified:	26 Jul 2024 14:32
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/170441

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