Katharina C. Cramer - Böcker

This thought-provoking book expands on the notion that Big Science is not the only term to describe and investigate particularly large research projects, scientific collaborations and facilities. It investigates the significant overlap between Big Science and Research Infrastructures (RIs) in a European context since the early twenty-first century.Contributions to this innovative book not only augment the study of Big Science with new perspectives, but also launch the study of RIs as a promising new line of inquiry. Chapters testify to a generational shift that is taking place in this field, amending and complementing prior analyses of Big Science. Advancing our knowledge, this interdisciplinary book explores how Big Science and RIs can be categorized, how the politics around them can be understood, and how they relate to the surrounding science and research policy landscape of Europe.Big Science and Research Infrastructures in Europe will be of value to students and scholars interested in science and innovation policy across sociology, economics, management and political science. Policymakers, science administrators and operators of RIs will also benefit from the critical insights provided.Contributors include: I.K. Bolliger, A. Collsiöö, K.C. Cramer, B. D'Ippolito, H. Eriksson, T. Franssen, A. Griffiths, O. Hallonsten, J.-C. Mauduit, M. Moskovko, N. Rüffin, C.-C. Rüling, I. Ulnicane, A. Williams

This book investigates the political history of Big Science in Europe in the late twentieth century and the early twenty-first century, characterised by the founding histories of two collaborative, single-sited facilities namely the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) in Grenoble, France and the European X-Ray Free-Electron Laser (European XFEL) in Schenefeld, Germany. Under the heading of the other Europe, this book presents the history and politics of European Big Science as an alternative road to (Western) European integration besides the mainstream political integration process of the European Economic Community and the European Union. It shows that Big Science has a role to play in European politics and policymaking and that the crucial and unavoidable symbiosis between science, technology and politics brings the creation of Big Science projects back to geopolitical realities.