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ECASS
After 14 years, nearly 500 visits from individuals totalling 22,000 days of access to ISER resources and expertise, ECASS, the European Centre for Analysis in the Social Sciences, said goodbye to the last of its visiting researchers in March. ECASS was created to foster the mobility of European researchers and promote the creation of pan-European research networks and was led by Marcia Freed Taylor.
In 1996, ECASS was recognised as one of only four European Large Scale Facilities (later renamed Major Research Infrastructures) in the social and economic sciences by the European Commission, and funded to facilitate new opportunities for research teams (including individual researchers) to obtain access to individual major research infrastructures they required for their work, and thereby increasing the human resources available for research and technological development. It was subsequently funded under the Fourth, Fifth and Sixth Framework Programmes of the European Commission. Major Research Infrastructures were selected on the basis of competitive application and were acknowledged to be unique or rare within Europe, providing a first-class service essential for top quality research, and capable of offering excellent scientific, technical and logistic support to external, particularly first-time users.
ECASS has enjoyed a very successful 14 years, hosting European researchers from every country of the old and newly expanded European Community as well as those affiliated nations such as Israel, Turkey and Switzerland . Almost all of the disciplines within the social sciences have been represented among the visitors, with a majority of researchers being either economists or sociologists.
All researchers underwent a rigorous selection process by an international Selection Committee (the rejection rate varied between 16 per cent and 52 per cent) and spent up to three months at ECASS carrying out their primarily quantitative, collaborative and cross-national research projects. Funding included travel, accommodation and a per diem to cover the additional costs of living away from home.
A key feature of the ECASS programme was that it allowed the researchers selected, both junior and more senior, the space, time and resources to carry out their own research in the congenial and collegial atmosphere of ECASS, ISER and the wider University. Projects have focused on a variety of social and economic problems, based on the many data resources accessible through the ISER and the UK Data Archive and allied to the research areas of interest to existing ISER researchers.
ECASS has been coordinated throughout its existence by Marcia Freed Taylor, assisted by John Brice, the Database Manager who provided technical and analytical assistance to our visitors and by Kate Tucker, the ECASS secretary who provided logistical assistance.
The results of the ECASS activities include a large number of completed and expanded PhDs, a wide variety of publications, and a highly motivated network of collaborative and comparative researchers spread throughout Europe. ECASS was instrumental in the establishment of both vertical and horizontal research networks – those involving both senior and more junior researchers, and those between researchers just starting out on their academic careers.
Several ECASS researchers have been or still are staff members of ISER, more were and are studying at ISER, and yet more are involved in collaborative projects and networks with former ECASS visitors and with ISER researchers. This means that the “ECASS effect” will continue, even though the programme itself is now at an end.