STSM Testimonials: Brexit’s Influence on UK Leadership in COST Actions

In February 2025 - during the Working Group 2 meeting in Warsaw - I met Martin, an Assistant Professor in Public and Social Policy at the School of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Nottingham, who has researched the impact of Brexit on financial services. Over lunch, I learned that one of his research interests was Brexit, a conversation that later sparked a new research idea for me. 

For my dissertation, I am studying leadership dynamics in COST Actions and researchers’ experiences of them. As part of this study, I had already collected data on participation and leadership across all actions. With the meetings of the OPEN COST Action Working Group 2, which aims to develop a comparative framework sensitive to different contexts to understand how geopolitics shapes European research openness, and the lunch conversation about Brexit, I began to wonder how Brexit had affected leadership in COST and how UK-based researchers experienced this process. 

When the call for Short-Term Scientific Missions was announced, I shared this idea with Martin. He showed strong interest, and thanks to this opportunity, I was able to visit him from 26 August to 7 September 2025 at the University of Nottingham. 

During the STSM, we ran statistical analyses on leadership roles in COST Actions. The results showed a statistically significant decline in the share of UK-based researchers holding leadership positions after Brexit. 

Based on this finding, we then focused on preparing the qualitative part of the project. Our original plan was to conduct and code several interviews during the visit, but the summer break made it difficult to reach participants. Instead, we prepared and sent invitation letters to potential participants who had held leadership roles both before and after Brexit. We also reviewed and refined the interview questions. In our discussions, we decided to expand the scope by also interviewing staff from the COST Association headquarters in Brussels. This will allow us to include diverse perspectives and make the qualitative study more robust. 

The interviews with four participants were conducted just after the STSM ended, and with them the project has moved into its next stage. Our goal is to publish our mixed-methods study on the impact of Brexit on research collaboration in Europe, which will also contribute to the deliverables of the OPEN COST Action. 

This STSM gave opportunity to push the project forward, develop new ideas, and strengthen collaboration within the action. As a young researcher from an Inclusiveness Target Country, it was also an important experience to work in a research-intensive environment. I am grateful for the support provided by the STSM grant and wish to express my sincere thanks to the OPEN COST Action.