-
Asked by Joe to Rebecca, Laura, Andrew on 19 Nov 2014.
-
Laura Schofield answered on 19 Nov 2014:
My work is funded by 2 different groups. One of them is a company called Lucite International who sponsor me to help them in their work and the other is the EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) which is a government agency. So my work is directly affected by the government because it relies on their funding!
-
-
Rebecca Ingle answered on 19 Nov 2014:
Politics definitely affects my funding and therefore my work! I’m also EPSRC funded, so the government decided how much money I personally get paid and how much money my research group get to run the lab. As the research I do is considered ‘basic science’ (aka answering very fundamental questions in science – like exactly how does energy flow through a molecule) then some governments are less inclined to give it money as they ‘don’t see the applications.’ (There are loads of applications for what I do but very often, particularly with science, governments can be very short sighted as they don’t understand it very well.)
-
Andrew McKinley answered on 19 Nov 2014:
Politics affects my work greatly – as a university the decisions of government concerning funding of research, funding of higher education, funding of students, and – particularly topical – the funding of pensions! – really does have an effect on us.
That said, aside from the money, the politics of government has little effect on exactly what we do.
There is the other side of ‘politics’ – not all politics is government – you can have “departmental politics”, “course politics”, and everything consists of being very careful about what you say, how you say it, and making sure that when you send a message/email, it can only be interpreted one way! Students’ Unions also have elections and governance, and that is also ‘politics’
Comments