The Institute for Higher Education Management would like to invite you to the upcoming lecture: Just following the money? How research funding shapes the governance of university research

Date: Thursday, December 4, 2025 at 4pm CET

Speaker: Jürgen Janger, economist at WIFO, the Austrian institute of economic research

Location: online via MS Teams livestream.

Please express your interest by registering with This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Abstract:

Two main reforms have taken place in many European university systems: first, universities have supposedly become autonomous strategic actors. Second, research funding has changed to a complex mix of often performance-based block grants and competitive project-based grants. However, literature so far has barely investigated how different research funding characteristics affect universities’ capacity to act strategically. We build a novel conceptual framework to argue that funding arrangements impact university leadership’s strategic space to steer research along three dimensions: the locus of the governance of research activities, how strategies are implemented, and which directions research takes. We investigate this in a comparative analysis of how research is governed at universities in Sweden and Austria, providing a systematic account of the effects of varying characteristics of research funding on strategically steering research at universities. Our results inform the discussion on whether and how financing can be used to govern university research.

About the speaker

Jürgen Janger is an economist at WIFO, the Austrian institute of economic research, where he has also been research group coordinator and deputy director for research in rotating, temporary management roles. His main research interests are science and innovation policy. A main research focus has been on the determinants of university research performance, attractive jobs and careers in academia, which he has investigated in many studies and research projects. He was a member of the Steering Committee of the large scale FP7 project WWWforEurope, coordinating research area 3 on innovation and science, which looked inter alia at the competitiveness of European science. He has also investigated research funding models, comparing the design of project-based funding across several large funders of basic research. Recently, he was an expert for the mutual learning exercise on research careers, responsible for the thematic report 3 on a balanced circulation of researchers.

CHER is now an associate partner of the master programme MARIHE (Master in Research and Innovation in Higher Education). MARIHE is supported by the Erasmus Mundus programme of the European Union and offers full scholarships for the student intake in October 2026. Application is now open to all nationalities.

MARIHE - Master in Research and Innovation in Higher Education - is a two-year Erasmus Mundus master programme supported by the European Union. It offers:
- a high-quality master programme on higher education, research and innovation management, with a truly global perspective
- full Erasmus Mundus scholarships from the European Union, open to applicants from all nationalities with a first university degree
- a 2-year full-time cross-cultural study journey - students will study in at least three different countries
- an intensive training experience in small groups of international top students
- an international network of recognized partner institutions, scholars, practitioners and alumni
-excellent job perspectives (PhD positions, higher education management, policy making etc.)

Application Deadline is 23 November 2025 and applications can be made at www.marihe.eu
Please distribute the call below to your contacts.

We are delighted to announce that registration is now open for the 3rd ENIS Virtual Summer School: Bridging Research and Practice in International Student Mobility, taking place online from 1–2 September 2025. The registration link is https://forms.gle/mainmUfgudmbCHTT9

This is an open event, including a series of cutting-edge studies and training courses. Please refer to the event programme via this link https://a2eb3eda-f3f3-4fcf-8cee-8e77cd9d3b7d.usrfiles.com/ugd/a2eb3e_15bd61de1fa94d7cb5a41cc9f3cb703e.pdf. We warmly welcome our community, especially inviting PhD colleagues, early career researchers, and practitioners. Feel free to share it with anyone who might be interested.

We look forward to hosting excellent keynotes, presentations, and workshops, and to seeing many of your faces 🤗

We would also like to provide some practical details:

- The programme is based on CET time. 

- If you are presenting, please join online 10 minutes before the session to test things out. 

- Each session will be facilitated by a member of the organising committee.