Dr Paul Benneworth FeRSA, is a Senior Researcher at the Center for Higher Education Policy Studies at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, and a Visiting Professor at Central Queensland University, Australia (2011-14). Prior to this post, he worked in a variety of research posts at the University of Newcastle in the United Kingdom, from 2005-2009 as a RCUK Academic Fellow in Territorial Governance of Innovation at the University of Newcastle‟s Institute of Policy and Practice. Paul‟s research interests focused on the territorial governance of innovation, and in particular the roles played by universities in those networks. Paul is editor of Regional Insights, the Review of the Regional Study Association, and was appointed as a Fellow of the Regional Studies Association in March 2011. Check his CV here.
Paul has been collaborating with INGENIO since 2011 in in the field of research valorisation and the exploitation of science system knowledge. More recently, this has expanded to include a number of new topics including social innovation, researcher networking and universities' third mission activities. The purpose of the October 2014 visit was principally related to the first of these areas, university research valorisation and in particular to advance three discrete pieces of work. The main focus of the visit was a conceptual think-piece on policy approaches for stimulating valorisation, based on taking a broader view of the relationship between research that is valorised into society, and the wider scientific knowledge pool. Paul led a symposium within INGENIO, where the initial ideas were presented, and based on the subsequent discussion, this has been written up as an INGENIO Working Paper. The two pieces of ongoing research work discussed during the visit are firstly a qualitative study of social sciences and humanities valorisation practices to complement previous conceptual and quantitative studies together with Magnus Gulbrandsen. The second was a further piece of quantitative work seeking to ask whether a willingness to include social partner knowledge in core research projects was correlated with scientific performance by individual researchers. In 2015, Mabel Sánchez Barrioluengo will continue the co-operation with a visit to CHEPS as part of INGENIO & CHEPS working together more closely in the area of universities and innovation capacity.