Opening address: Dame Ottoline Leyser

It’s a pleasure to be here and to join you all in this picturesque setting to reflect on the new Enlightenment. I am only sorry I can’t stay at this amazing gathering for longer.

Six years ago, Paul Nurse wrote a report which reviewed the structure of the UK’s research councils and considered how they could become equipped for the future.

That review led to the formation of the UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), which I have the privilege to lead. UKRI is the main national funding agency, connecting disciplines and sectors across the research and innovation endeavour.

The Nurse review also signaled a wider need, for a stronger bond between the research and innovation system and wider society.

In Paul’s words, what is needed is a “compact that bonds science and society” to “deliver excellent science and ensure that it is used for the public good.”

I would like to reflect briefly on these intertwined ambitions for UKRI - to increase porosity and connectivity both the within the R&I system and between the R&I system and wider society. These aims are central to delivering a New Enlightenment.

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Fundamental to the ‘first’ Enlightenment (if I can call it that) was a shift in ideas about the nature of power and authority. Authority should be rooted in reasoned discourse. The authority to govern should depend on the consent of the governed, in the context of an increasingly educated population with access to both knowledge and the ability to use it.

In a clear reflection of these ideals, the Enlightenment was characterised by a fervour for science and innovation, and the tangible possibility of social mobility.

It was possible for someone from very humble beginnings, like Captain Cook, to move in scientific circles and, with the backing of the Royal Society, travel half way round the world to track the transit of Venus.

In the intervening centuries, research and innovation have transformed the way we live. But they have also become progressively more and more professionalized, driving their sub-division into overly rigid disciplines and sectors, and their segregation from wider society.

The result is a significant danger of re-establishing authority-by-right, rather than authority-by-consent. This is perhaps most iconically illustrated in the controversial remark of Michael Gove, that “the people of this country have had enough of experts with organisations with acronyms saying that they know what is best”.

The way in which many in the academic community reacted to this comment to me amplifies the concern of a growing divide between the haves and have-nots of a sense of agency.

How is it that science has increasingly become something that is done to you, not something done with you?

All this has been powerfully illustrated over the last year and a half. On the one hand, the pandemic has amplified systemic inequalities on our society, but it has also potently illustrated the power of science to deliver for everyone.

It’s hard to think of a more emblematic example of a ‘science superpower’ in action than the vaccine rollout, and crucially the cohesion of everyone involved, right through to the volunteers at the vaccination centres.

It’s crucial that we build on this momentum and make the most of the opportunities ahead.

What we need now is a grassroots enlightenment, one in which researchers, policymakers and the public view science as a collective endeavour, of and for the whole of society.

To be the ‘science superpower’ we need to empower everyone.

To tackle the many challenges we are now facing, we need an inclusive, collaborative and creative research and innovation system, deeply embedded in society and connected across sectors and disciplines, valuing diversity, difference, and engaged debate. A new enlightenment.

We have a real opportunity to build back better, through an inclusive, sustainable knowledge economy, built on a world-class research and innovation system.

One to which everyone has the opportunity to contribute and from which everyone benefits.

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Research and innovation are basic human instincts: everyone does them.

That we have over-professionalised them as we have deployed them to address ever more complex questions, segregating them into an elite and alien world inhabited by boffins, is merely an accident of history.

In short, if research and innovation were a sport, most people would think of them as polo. Elite, hard to access and done by others.

In the new Enlightenment, they need to become football – a national sport in which anyone can participate.

I hope you’ll join me in toasting this new Enlightenment.