Research Careers & Research Funding

11th November 12-1pm GMT/ 1-2pm CET

Part of the ECR Research on Research Seminar Series.

‘Opening up’ evaluations of research(er) quality: the case of narrative-style CVs in Dutch research funding

Marta Sienkiewicz

In their commitment to responsible research assessment, many research funders experiment with narrative-style CV formats in their grant funding evaluations. These new evaluative instruments are meant to capture diverse forms of scholarly activities and decrease the overreliance on quantitative quality proxies in peer review of funding applications (Bordignon et al. 2023; Albert et al. 2025). With new and diverse types of information inscribed in the new CV comes a choice of how to value it. Research(er) quality resides both in judgement devices such as CVs as well as in flexible agency of the reviewers to read the information through the lens of their values and norms (Kaltenbrunner and de Rijcke 2019). In my research, I focus on reviewers’ practices of and attitudes to reviewing the narrative-style CV in the Dutch funding context. I am interested in the implications thereof for meanings of research(er) quality, valuable academic activities, and convincing evaluative evidence that reviewers (re)produce with the new assessment apparatus. Drawing on interviews with committee members from SSH panels, I explore how reviewers in social sciences and humanities react to new enactments of research quality brought forward by the applicants and to the expectations regarding their valuations put on them by the funder. In the ECR RoRSS talk, I will present work in progress focused on tracing the conditions under which the new CV opens up and closes down (Stirling 2008) modes of evaluation, leading to or blocking consideration of more diverse notions of quality in funding assessments.

Marta Sienkiewicz is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), Leiden University. Coming from sociology (University of Warsaw, University of Amsterdam), she expanded her focus to sociological intersections with science and technology studies, science policy, and valuation studies. Her doctoral research focuses on research assessment reform in the Netherlands, particularly new evaluative procedures and tools that aim to capture wider notions of research quality, problematise established metrics, and challenge the excellence regime. She is more broadly interested in research governance, transformations of research cultures, and societal/policy impact of research. Before her appointment at CWTS, she worked at the Joint Research Centre of the European Commission, where she focused on strengthening connections between science and policy inside the Commission and across the European Union.

Unpacking Gender Disparities in Research Funding and Academic Careers at the University of Cambridge

Agata Czech

Research funding is widely recognised as an important driver of academic career progression, yet there is longstanding concern that access to funding may differ systematically across demographic groups. This talk will present findings from the University of Cambridge’s Improving Inclusivity in Grant Funding project, which examines gender disparities in grant funding using linked administrative data and Bayesian methods. While descriptive analyses suggest gender differences in funding outcomes, our results show little evidence of persistent disparities at the point of application once structural factors, particularly seniority and discipline, are taken into account. These findings shift the focus from grant review processes to the structural inequalities that shape who applies for funding and at what stage of their career. The presentation will conclude by introducing our new research project, which combines longitudinal administrative data and simulation modelling to investigate how these structural disparities emerge, persist, and accumulate over academic careers, and how universities can better target interventions to promote equity.

Agata Czech is a Research Assistant in the Research on Research (RoR) group and an Affiliated Researcher at the Bennett School for Public Policy. She’s a quantitative researcher with a background in economics and international development. Her research focuses on inequalities in academia, having previously examined gender disparities in grant funding and now investigating disparities in academic career progression.

Register at https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/HUs5essDSwmcyXY23LjVOQ