School of Social and Political Science

Description

Starting from the current literature on the geography of R&D activities, we show that one limitation of this work is to assume a homogeneity of the places from which research articles are published. Another limitation, even more pronounced for patent data, is to assume a correspondence between the place of institutional affiliation of authors and their place of activity. We will show that these limitations lead to to far-reaching conclusions about the metropolitan dimension of science and innovation activities. The aim of this presentation is to highlight, in the continuity of David N. Livingstone's seminal work on the geography of science, the richness and diversity of contemporary research places. This diversity explains why, depending on the field of research we are interested in, but also on the dimension of the research work we are interested in (i.e. production or field work), we can distinguish between multiple geographies. We will take different examples, including the geographies of contemporary marine sciences. Finally, we will see that the logics of the location of research activities evolve over time and differ according to the type of research institution under scrutiny.