ERC grants ‘could be an exit strategy’ for researchers leaving UK
UK-based researchers could start using prestigious European Research Council grants as an “exit strategy” to find jobs in mainland Europe, as uncertainty over the UK’s future in the European Union research persists, according to a winner who left Britain following the Brexit vote.
Romanian-born political scientist Adriana Bunea, who won a five-year ERC Starting Fellowship in 2018, left the University of Southampton to take up a post at the University of Bergen the following year.
Dr Bunea gives an example of what senior UK industry officials fear will become a trend if the country does not join the European Union’s Horizon Europe research programme: top researchers applying for ERC grants granted under the scheme, sometimes described as ‘the Research Champions League’ or ‘mini-Nobel Prize’, flowing out of the UK to institutions in EU member states or associated countries.
Talks over the UK’s association with Horizon Europe have stalled as the European Commission links the issue to a resolution of the Brussels-Westminster disagreement over the Northern Ireland protocol.
Dr Bunea said her departure from Southampton, taking her ERC grant to study the use of stakeholder consultations in the EU, was prompted by the fact that she had made “countless requests for funding from the UK -Uni” without success.
Either because she was “not Oxbridge”, or “not networked enough, or maybe my topic was not relevant to the UK context, I was getting nothing [UK] funding,” she added.
It meant “all my professional prospects [were] will depend on obtaining European funding, in particular an ERC project,” she continues.
So staying in the UK became “a big gamble” in terms of future EU funding and “it was a level of uncertainty that I didn’t want to have at the time”. [early] moment in my career,” said Dr. Bunea.
But if the UK joins Horizon Europe, could it turn out that it jumped too soon?
Dr Bunea pointed to broader factors: in Norway, there is government matching funding for the institutions where ERC laureates are based and a culture of “public good” within research, distinct from “research”. more individualistic of academic fame” in the UK, she argued. Moreover, the Norwegian government, thanks to its oil wealth, “pushed money into public education” and “also considered higher education as a public investment”.
Moving to Norway was therefore “the right decision for me as a person, as a professional and for us as a family”, said Dr Bunea, whose husband is an academic who also moved to Bergen after left the UK.
Factors such as pension cuts are also reducing the UK’s attractiveness to researchers, she said. But ERC scholarship holders will be attractive to continental European institutions and their scholarships could open the door to prestigious chairs in countries like Germany, she continued.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if the UK [based] academics are actually starting to use their CREs as an exit strategy; thinking about an ERC application not only to get a grant, but also to find a job elsewhere,” said Dr Bunea.
However, she stressed that she felt great sadness about leaving the UK – she and her husband “cried after the [EU] result of the referendum. It was an excruciatingly painful experience. »
She added that “if Brexit hadn’t happened, my husband and I would never have left the UK”, but it was essential to have the certainty of “knowing that we can always have access to European funding and collaborations, to advance our professional development”.