Coordination:

José Reis, João Arriscado Nunes and Tiago Santos Pereira

The PhD programme "Governance, Knowledge and Innovation" offered by the School of Economics of Coimbra University, organized by the Centre for Social Studies (CES), is to begin its second edition in the academic year of 2007/2008, now adapted to the organizational structures put forward by the Bologna Declaration for the third cycle of Higher Education. Currently under way is the first edition, comprising research seminars. The ten students who concluded the teaching component have begun preparing their dissertations on topics relating to the economy of innovation and of knowledge, social economics institutions, innovation in public administration and social movements.

Objectives

The PhD Programme incorporates a series of topics which are of major importance in the governance of contemporary societies and economies, especially so as we are faced with the challenges of innovation. As an immediate task, the notion that governance has become extraordinarily complex and is a multi-dimensional process mobilizing several coordinating mechanisms – the State, the market, the community, networks, businesses and entrepreneurial hierarchies. The term "governance" and its recurring use derive precisely from the fact that it is not possible to concentrate analysis on the market, or on the State, or on entrepreneurial strategies taken individually. Thus, it has become essential to coordinate actors, processes and specific dynamics, and it is clear that the institutional dimension of economic and social output is a force to be reckoned with. The approximation put forward is, in this way, profoundly interdisciplinary. Added value is given to the new disciplinary relations, as it is given to the more innovative forms of knowledge production within the disciplines. Signification is also given to the diversity of social, organizational, political and institutional contexts in which knowledge is produced. In addition, prominence is given to the production of knowledge, working at science policies, the social impact of knowledge and technology and relations with the policies of innovation, whether this be the subject of public policies, or when it is contained in wider social structures and processes of a more widespread reach.

The Programme therefore sets out to gain greater conceptual and analytical depth on contemporary societies, the institutions, agents, the policies and the target processes which confer on them meaning and specificity, whether historical, geographical or political. The objective is thus to attain a high level of theoretical awareness and analytical capacity to study and understand contemporary societies, the policies and their institutional processes of governance and innovation.