Large Grant-Funded Research Centres and Concept Generation in Development Research

Portia Roelofs

doi:10.1080/00220388.2024.2420022

Large Grant-Funded Research Centres and Concept Generation in Development Research

Portia Roelofs^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Political Economy

King's College London

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

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Abstract

Research centres are increasingly an integral part of the institutional and organisational infrastructure of knowledge production in development studies. However, whilst other components of the knowledge production have been problematised for their role in reproducing the hierarchies of the ‘global-north-dominated science and research ecosystem’ (Gebremariam, 2022), centres have received little direct attention. This paper identifies a new generation of large grant-funded research centres (LGRCs) as on object of study in themselves. These are large in terms of both ambitions and budgets, yet are distinguished from more permanent departments or institutes in their reliance on fixed-term grant funding. It unpicks how LGRC’s internal organisational dynamics and their location within the British and global political economies of development research encourage the dissemination of concepts coined by their Principal Investigators (PIs), through centre-branded grey literature. Whilst research grants commonly release scholars from contractual teaching and administration obligations, two case studies of LGRCs at a UK university show how this process of ‘buy-out’ can be conceived more broadly as a buy-out from peer-review, with consequences for maintaining what Hountoundji (1990, p. 6) calls ‘the North’s monopoly on theory’.

Original language	English
Journal	JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES
Early online date	11 Dec 2024
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2024.2420022
Publication status	E-pub ahead of print - 11 Dec 2024

Keywords

development research
development studies
large grant-funded research centres
overseas development aid
political economy of knowledge production
political marketplace

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1080/00220388.2024.2420022Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Roelofs LGRCs Accepted ManuscriptAccepted author manuscript, 340 KBLicence: CC BY

Cite this

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title = "Large Grant-Funded Research Centres and Concept Generation in Development Research",

abstract = "Research centres are increasingly an integral part of the institutional and organisational infrastructure of knowledge production in development studies. However, whilst other components of the knowledge production have been problematised for their role in reproducing the hierarchies of the {\textquoteleft}global-north-dominated science and research ecosystem{\textquoteright} (Gebremariam, 2022), centres have received little direct attention. This paper identifies a new generation of large grant-funded research centres (LGRCs) as on object of study in themselves. These are large in terms of both ambitions and budgets, yet are distinguished from more permanent departments or institutes in their reliance on fixed-term grant funding. It unpicks how LGRC{\textquoteright}s internal organisational dynamics and their location within the British and global political economies of development research encourage the dissemination of concepts coined by their Principal Investigators (PIs), through centre-branded grey literature. Whilst research grants commonly release scholars from contractual teaching and administration obligations, two case studies of LGRCs at a UK university show how this process of {\textquoteleft}buy-out{\textquoteright} can be conceived more broadly as a buy-out from peer-review, with consequences for maintaining what Hountoundji (1990, p. 6) calls {\textquoteleft}the North{\textquoteright}s monopoly on theory{\textquoteright}.",

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Large Grant-Funded Research Centres and Concept Generation in Development Research

Abstract

Keywords

UN SDGs

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