The Rise of the New Big Science: Opportunities and challenges for nations, universities and science

Instrumentation is at the heart of the empirical sciences and instruments have become larger, more powerful, and more sophisticated. From the perspective of the social sciences, the placement of the ESS in Lund is a unique opportunity to study a new Big-Science facility as it is being designed and constructed. We want to exploit this opportunity to develop our understanding of Big-Science efforts.

Instrumentation is at the heart of the empirical sciences and in order to produce a greater quantity and quality of data, instruments have become larger, more powerful, and more sophisticated. This is one of several observations behind the introduction of the concept of ‘Big Science’ to describe and understand the development of instrumentation in research facilities in scientific areas such as high-energy physics and astronomy. In order to tackle the rising costs of new and improved scientific instruments, one important strategy has been international and global cooperation, and indeed many initiatives have been taken over the years to stimulate transnational collaboration in the sciences. The purpose of this project is to study the present efforts to construct one of the most exciting new Big-Science facilities, the European Spallation Source (ESS) in Lund in southern Sweden, as well as its potential consequences as a joint international project involving seventeen partner countries. From the perspective of the social sciences, the placement of the ESS in Lund is a unique opportunity to study a Big Scientific collaborative effort in real time, that is, as the ESS is being designed and constructed.