Paper short abstract:

Funding calls have a central role in constructing the forms of interdisciplinarity that research and innovation actors experience. Indeed, funding calls specifically set the conditions for possibility, in how projects on sustainability's grand challenges are designed and constructed.

Paper long abstract:

Funding calls actively shape the research and innovation landscape through the opportunities that they provide. Likewise, funding calls are also actively shaped by (as artefacts of the social processes behind) research and innovation communities. In recognising this, STS scholars are well-placed to reflect on the implications of the recent deluge of project funding that seeks to combat societal challenges, for instance associated with sustainability.

I assert that much can be gained from opening-up the institutional experiences that sit behind the provision of project funding calls; from funding call conception and drafting, to proposal evaluation and project award. Within these processes, it is critical to acknowledge how these interactions are dependent on both institutional and more tacit/unspoken processes. There is scare empirical investigation of such experiences in the literature.

The aim of this study is to investigate the chronology of negotiations that occurs between key institutional players, as they negotiate contrasting expectations in their work on funding large-scale sustainability research projects. We give special attention to how different forms of interdisciplinarity are imagined, designed-in, rewarded, excluded, etc., and with what effects for the knowledges being made and transformations being sought. What roles are given to Social Sciences and Humanities, for instance? Which communities are expected to come together? What does all this mean for how interdisciplinarity is being institutionally enacted? I discuss the findings from 15 interviews with actors involved in e.g. EU Member State delegations, European Commission Directorate-General call drafting, National Contact Point dissemination, and European Commission Agency evaluation.