News, March 2016
Prof Robin Cowan is a current visiting scholar at the Centre for Research on Evaluation, Science and Technology (CREST) at Stellenbosch University. Robin Cowan is Professor of the Economics of Technical Change at the University of Maastricht, and Professor of Management at the Faculty of Economics and Management at the University of Strasbourg. If you are interested in the work of Prof Cowan please read on as he describes his research at CREST in his own words.
Q. What is aim of the research that you are engaging in at CREST?
A. What I am doing at CREST is part of a larger project I have going with several colleagues in Maastricht and Strasbourg. We are interested in universities and science in middle income countries. Much of our focus is on South Africa. The thing that I am focussed on specifically these months is transformation. As everyone knows the end of apartheid opened up the university system, and more specifically the formerly white, research-focussed universities, to all races in South Africa. The system is in a transition now towards a racial composition that is more representative of the society as a whole. With some colleagues we are trying to write a simple model that will allow us to examine different aspects of that transition. If we can successfully calibrate it to the recent history, it might be useful to guide policy interventions aimed at speeding up the transition.
Q. In which way does your research at CREST play into your greater research interests?
A. This general project of “science in South Africa” takes up roughly half of my research energy in general. Most broadly put, I am interested in knowledge—its creation and diffusion, and this interest has brought me to do a lot of work on (social) networks as the infrastructure over which knowledge moves. My interest in South Africa fits in there, but the rest of my time is spent doing more abstract models of innovation networks, often in the context of innovating firms. I was planning to come to STIAS for three months, and in the course of arranging that I was looking at University of Stellenbosch generally to see what was happening there, and I came upon the CREST website. When I saw what CREST is and has been doing, it seemed like an obvious place for me to try to visit, since the research here, and what we are doing seems to fit together as almost perfect complements. My approach to Johann Mouton was very graciously received, and here I am. As part of our discussions I suggested the possibility of a workshop, and he was enthusiastic about it.
