Grants and Epistemic Values, Practices and Assets

Universities aspire to attract grants. Grants enable research but they are also important for the careers of organizational actors and for the prestige and visibility of the university. In this context, key questions to ask are what are the epistemic and economic valuations related to grants? And how do grants affect academic values and practices at the universities? This paper investigates these questions empirically based on 71 interviews with grant holders, conducted from 2017 to 2019. Preliminary findings suggest that, considered as assets, grants give grant holders important leverage in developing their careers but also change their epistemic practices, in different ways, depending on the career stage of the grant holder. Moreover, grants create new conditions for academic research that sometimes challenge the core identity of the university. The paper contributes to STS debates on technoscientific capitalism by exploring how grants change and organize epistemic values, practices, and assets.