VOICES JENNIFER RUBIN Research into action


Professor Jennifer Rubin, ESRC’s new Chief Executive and Executive Chair Designate, explains her goals for the ESRC, her research background and how social science can help address global problems to improve outcomes. By Martin Ince


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ROFESSOR JENNIFER RUBIN has just become the ESRC’s Chief Executive and Executive Chair Designate. In April, the post will transform into that of Executive


Chair of ESRC, one of the nine constituent bodies of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI). She comes to ESRC from King’s College


London, where she is professor of public policy and was director of the King’s Policy Institute. She has extensive experience of academic life and of social science consultancy, and before joining King’s was executive vice president of a not-for- profit research organisation, RAND Corporation’s European offices. Asked about her first priorities on joining


ESRC, Professor Rubin points to the unique moment that is the creation of UKRI. She sees it as the opportunity to create something that “more than ever facilitates research funding across disciplines, so the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” She says: “My first institutional priority is to make a success of the ESRC becoming part of UKRI and to enhance the pivotal contribution of the social sciences to the UK research and innovation landscape. This will call for coordinated, strategic working within ESRC and with the other eight bodies that will constitute UKRI.”


Rubin is clear that this ambition will only succeed if ESRC is supporting world-leading science, and is working with the world’s best social scientists and funders. “Inevitably,” she says, “we social scientists will identify some areas in which we could be doing better.” This might involve strengthening data infrastructure and data linking, training of graduate students and early career researchers, and as she puts it, “some new vehicles” for facilitating working across academic and


“ Social science can be key


to turning much research and innovation into effective action


bridging institutions on pressing societal issues. She says: “I am ambitious for us to be supporting excellent social science which helps us understand human behaviour, social relations and society, and addresses societal challenges.” Despite her background in commissioned research as well as in academic social science, Rubin emphasises her commitment to so-called pure research. As she sees it, the dichotomy between pure and applied is overstated. “Much curiosity-driven research ends up useful. A now familiar example is the way that anthropological research turned out to be valuable in understanding the spread of disease during the Ebola epidemic, and in generating strategies to tackle that spread. Applying more theoretical and conceptual approaches to empirical challenges may not only inform those challenges, but also creates feedback loops that help develop and improve the theoretical and conceptual starting points.” She is “a firm believer” in the value of long-term research that “is not limited to one set agenda or one policy cycle.” In helping to foster the excitement of researching the social world and the understanding it creates, she says, curiosity-driven research is of great value.


Rubin also stresses the importance of social


science to delivering on UKRI’s ambitions. “Social science can be key to turning much research and innovation into effective action that improves outcomes. I know there is an appetite in UKRI and elsewhere to create shared understanding of key problems and solutions that have a social component. Why spend billions on a new antibiotic without also seeking to understand and improve how GPs prescribe and patients use it?”


22 SOCIETY NOW WINTER 2018 ”


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