Paper short abstract:

This paper posits large grant-funded research centres (LGRCs) as on object of study in themselves. Two case studies of British LGRCs point to unintended consequences of the recent development research funding regime, with worrisome implications for concept generation and dissemination.

Paper long 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 seeks to unpick how their internal organisational dynamics and location within the British and global political economies of development research, may serve to maintain the uneven ability of differently located scholars to not only capture funding for their research, but crucially, to disseminate concepts. 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, with consequences for which ideas achieve impact in academic and policy discourse and what Paulin Hountondji (1990, 6) calls the “North’s monopoly of theory”.