[PhD defence] 22/11/2024 - Jonathan Zurbach: "Supporting and improving science": discourses, funding and scientific policies of research infrastructures for quantitative data in the social sciences (1964-2024)" (UPR JPEG - FR AGORANTIc)

Jonathan ZURBACH will submit his thesis on 22 November 2024 on the subject of "Supporting and improving science: discourses, funding and scientific policies of research infrastructures for quantitative data in the social sciences (1964-2024)".

Laboratory

UPR 3788 - JPEG

Composition of the jury

Mr Marrel GUILLAUME	Avignon University	Thesis supervisor
Ms Lise RENAUD	Avignon University	Thesis co-supervisor
Ms Chérifa BOUKACEM-ZEGHMOURI	Claude Bernard University Lyon 1	Rapporteur
Ms Ghislaine CHARTRON	CNAM Conservatoire national des arts et métiers	Examiner
Mr Jérôme DENIS	École des Mines Paris - PSL	Examiner
Mr Michel DUBOIS	Sorbonne University	Examiner
Mr Thomas FRANSSEN	Leiden University	Examiner
Mr Jérôme AUST	Sciences Po Paris	Rapporteur
Mr Ouassim HAMZAOUI	Avignon University	Co-supervisor

Summary

At the intersection of political science, information and communication sciences and the sociology of science and organisations, this thesis examines the conditions of possibility and felicity, both argumentative and institutional, of reformist work that articulates scientific legitimisation and the expansion of social science budgets. The anatomy of these conditions is based, on the one hand, on an analysis of the scientific articles, reports and legal texts produced by the founding fathers of the American and European quantitative data archive movements for the comparative social sciences, from the 1960s onwards, and by the generation of academic entrepreneurs of European research infrastructures dedicated to the social sciences that succeeded them, from the 1990s onwards.

This thesis thus gives substance to the trajectory of reform in the social sciences, from UNESCO to the French Ministry of Research, via the OECD and the European Strategy Forum for Research Infrastructures (ESFRI), from the 2000s onwards. It also involves semi-directive interviews with teacher-researchers and engineers at PROGEDO (PROduction et GEstion des DOnnées), a national research infrastructure dedicated to organising the intensification of the production and use of quantitative data within the knowledge production processes of the French social sciences. This thesis provides a long-term understanding and explanation of the issues involved in inventing and implementing research infrastructures dedicated to the social sciences. Initially, the stakeholders in these infrastructures aim to 'support' traditional conceptions and practices in the social sciences, which are deemed scientifically credible and valuable in terms of understanding the contemporary world and obtaining public funding. Secondly, these same stakeholders seek to 'improve' the other conceptions and practices of the social sciences, which are deemed to lack credibility and value, and are therefore in need of reform.

Keywords research infrastructure, science policy, research funding, institutional discourse, research data, scientific organisation

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