Over the Ditch and through the Thorns: accessing European funds for research and social justice

In 1995 the European Commission invited the educational research community to present proposals to its Targeted Socio-Economic Research programme. Across Europe faxes, phones and the internet were busy as partnerships were formed, research ideas were translated into bulky proposals and numerous researchers got ready to cross the ditch into European collaborative research. In this article I try to scramble through the thorns at the top of the ditch by focusing on the structures and processes of power associated with Commission-funded educational research and action for social justice. This exploratory, descriptive paper is based on several years' experience of submitting research proposals to the European Commission and on recent research into European-funded training in the UK. Drawing on these sources I identify and consider some of the power relationships associated with European-funded research and with European-funded action for social justice.