TRIGGER at 14th International Triple Helix in Heidelberg

In an event organised in association with the EU TRIGGER project, Birkbeck Professor Helen Lawton Smith presented the results of recent research on gender at the 14^th International Triple Helix conference in Heidelberg.  Professor Lawton Smith was also one of the Chairs for a roundtable discussion on gender, diversity, and entrepreneurship, along with Dr. Rebecca Lund (Aarhus University), Professor Cheryl Leggon (Georgia Institute of Technology, School of Public Policy) and Mr Ali Hashem (Cllr London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham).  The session was chaired by Dr. Devrim Göktepe-Hultén (Triple Helix Association).

Academia and universities across the globe have been undergoing a great deal of change the past three decades. Numerous university and higher education reforms have been carried out, emphasizing internationalization, innovation, entrepreneurialism, societal impact, higher standards in research and diversification of funding. This has involved redefinitions of what counts as the valuable, good or ideal academic, and increasingly, at least within certain fields of research, the academic is constructed as a science-based entrepreneur.

Although policy makers, managers and other stakeholders tend to claim these new standards for quality and success to be inevitable, objective and neutral, and even sometimes make attempts at attracting more minorities/immigrants, youth and women to embark on these career paths, many studies have shown how people are differently positioned in terms of achieving recognition and promotion, hence their career possibilities and paths look quite different (e.g. Etzkowitz et al 2000; Goel et al 2015 ). A number of scholars have critiqued the ways in which these reforms of universities, often happening in line with neoliberal values, reproduce and strengthen inequality in terms of gender, but also in terms of intersecting class, age, ethnicity (e.g. Lund 2015).

TRIGGER – an EU-funded five country gender equality project led in the UK by Birkbeck, University of London – is just one example of an initiative dedicated to improving gender equality by focusing on strategies which involve all potential stakeholders to overcome indifference, cultural resistance and backlash. TRIGGER actions are designed to build new perspectives beyond the traditional ‘neutral’ understanding of science.

Professor Lawton Smith presented recent TRIGGER research from a survey and interviews on gender differences in commercialisation of research in UK universities.  The results included a series of recommendations from three main themes that were derived from the interviews: commercialisation benefits; commercialisation issues and career, gender, and seniority issues.

The roundtable discussion went on to explore how researchers who have studied universities and entrepreneurship from a gender and diversity perspective can bring their knowledge to inform everyday practices at the university and beyond.

By Mark Panton, TRIGGER Administrator.

Email at: mpanto01@mail.bbk.ac.uk