{"title":"Embedded Social Science and the British Government COVID-19 Response","authors":"A. Tasker, L. Irvine","doi":"10.3167/aia.2022.290107","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"The complex and evolving nature of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic poses significant challenges to national and international emergency preparedness and response. Governments must navigate streams of emerging data in real time, synthesising knowledge from diverse sources to inform policy. The UK government drew on experiences from earlier pandemics to bridge perceived gaps between social science research and policy through the secondment of early-career academics as embedded scientists. In this article, we present comparative ethnographic data describing embedded social scientists’ contributions to UK COVID-19 preparedness and response. We find that the liminal position, loose identities, and high degree of autonomy of embedded scientists allowed these individuals to navigate multiple networks to strengthen and legitimise the role of social science within policy debates.","PeriodicalId":43493,"journal":{"name":"Anthropology in Action-Journal for Applied Anthropology in Policy and Practice","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":1.1000,"publicationDate":"2022-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Anthropology in Action-Journal for Applied Anthropology in Policy and Practice","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.3167/aia.2022.290107","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"ANTHROPOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
The complex and evolving nature of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic poses significant challenges to national and international emergency preparedness and response. Governments must navigate streams of emerging data in real time, synthesising knowledge from diverse sources to inform policy. The UK government drew on experiences from earlier pandemics to bridge perceived gaps between social science research and policy through the secondment of early-career academics as embedded scientists. In this article, we present comparative ethnographic data describing embedded social scientists’ contributions to UK COVID-19 preparedness and response. We find that the liminal position, loose identities, and high degree of autonomy of embedded scientists allowed these individuals to navigate multiple networks to strengthen and legitimise the role of social science within policy debates.
期刊介绍:
Anthropology in Action (AIA) is a peer-reviewed journal publishing articles, commentaries, research reports, and book reviews in applied anthropology. Contributions reflect the use of anthropological training in policy- or practice-oriented work and foster the broader application of these approaches to practical problems. The journal provides a forum for debate and analysis for anthropologists working both inside and outside academia and aims to promote communication amongst practitioners, academics and students of anthropology in order to advance the cross-fertilisation of expertise and ideas. Recent themes and articles have included the anthropology of welfare, transferring anthropological skills to applied health research, design considerations in old-age living, museum-based anthropology education, cultural identities and British citizenship, feminism and anthropology, and international student and youth mobility.