Amanda Crowfoot
As the representative of all member states’ major funding and research organisations, Science Europe will have to pack a punch. Elizabeth Gibney meets the director charged with getting it into shape.
Created from two European big hitters, Eurohorcs and the ESF, Science Europe has ambitions to become the voice of the scientist in the EU. But since its foundation in October 2011, the organisation has yet to make itself heard among the clamour of the European Commission and national governments.
Taking over as director from 26 March, Amanda Crowfoot, director of the UK Research Office in Brussels, will work to increase Science Europe’s staff from four to around 15 and to develop its policy agenda.
The first task is to reach out to Science Europe’s 49 members, she says, who together distribute more than €30 billion of funding a year. “I think the priority is actually building up the relationship with member organisations so that we can be their common voice and represent their interests where it’s relevant,” Crowfoot says.
Science Europe was formed after the dissolution of the heads of research councils group Eurohorcs, and, while not a formal merger, it will also eventually replace the European Science Foundation’s lobbying activities. But critics suggest it may struggle to represent the range of opinions at the grassroots of research. Crowfoot’s job will be to craft Science Europe’s six scientific committees—intended to be the route through which researchers will engage and feed their views into Science Europe’s policies.
“I think that identifying and explaining differences, where these exist, is often important in itself,” says Crowfoot. “However, there are clearly many areas of collective interest, and Science Europe will promote those of its member organisations.”
The fact that Crowfoot and Science Europe’s first president, Paul Boyle, are both British should not be a problem. “My role there will be to work with and represent all the members,” she says. “Also I would point out that there’s a governing board that has members from lots of different countries involved and the staff of the office will be international and not operating with any national focus, so I don’t see that there would be any problem.”
The creation of Science Europe is “extremely timely”, she says, given efforts to build the European Research Area—an initiative that will, in theory, allow researchers to move between jobs in European nations with the same ease with which their US colleagues move between states.
Earlier this month the European Commission proposed to use non-binding agreements to regulate the ERA, a move criticised by universities as insufficient. But Crowfoot seems supportive of leaving action at member-state level. “It is important to recognise that there is already significant cooperation between research funders and research organisations across Europe, on a voluntary basis,” she says. “This can be continued and built upon in developing ERA.”
Coming from a member-state background, Crowfoot is also clear that European and national funding have distinct roles. “Really, what European funding should be there for is to join things up and add value to what happens at a member-state level,” she says.
Inputting into Brussels policy will not be new for Crowfoot. Her time at the UK Research Office was about more than just helping UK researchers navigate the European funding maze, she says. “It’s also important to ensure a two-way dialogue with EU institutions and others,” she adds. “And this is part of the value of being in Brussels.” One of the biggest issues for Science Europe though, will be influencing the shaping of the Commission’s biggest funding programme, Horizon 2020. Within it, she says, remain many unanswered questions.
“On the whole it is a good proposal, but personally I think that there are still some questions surrounding rules of participation,” she says. ”We need to make it so that it ends up being something that makes it easier for researchers to engage, not more complicated.”
A particular bugbear is the proposed flat rate for indirect costs, which she says doesn’t account for the real costs experienced by institutions. “In recent years there have been significant efforts in many European countries to develop robust full-cost accounting systems, and using these has been an option in [Framework 7],” she says. “To remove the possibility… in Horizon 2020 is contrary to all of these efforts.”
At the heart of Brussels
* Amanda Crowfoot has been at the UK Research Office since 2001; and director since 2005, so she knows her way around the Brussels policy scene.
* Before exchanging data and information became so easy, national research offices such as the UKRO, the German KoWi and France’s Club des Organismes de Recherche Associés, were essential for member states to stay informed.
* But today’s 22 member-state research liaison offices are no longer just one-way information channels, instead also acting as informal representatives of member-states’ interests.