FERNANDA BEIGEL (She, born September 6, 1970)
I was trained as a sociologist at the National University of Cuyo, a public university located in a medium size provincial city in Argentina, where I still live and work. This localization, far from the capital, was difficult in the first part of my career given that Argentina is highly a centralized country in terms of research resources and opportunities. But in my hometown, I had the joy to meet a great philosopher and intellectual historian, Arturo Andrés Roig, who was my mentor and director of my PhD, which I defended in August 2001. His own networks, more developed within Latin America than across Buenos Aires were my first path to international circulation, and the point of departure for other spaces, particularly France. During 2004-2008 I fulfilled my postdoctoral studies through several séjours in the Bourdieusian research team based at the Centre de Sociologie Européenne (today CESSP-Paris I, CNRS, EHESS), where I still develop currently many collaborative projects.
During my doctoral training and research, I moved from intellectual history to the sociology of culture, and during my postdoctoral studies, I moved forward to critical studies of science. My key motivation throughout my academic career has been to foster the free circulation of ideas, multilingualism and biodiversity, which I consider basal for my country and region but mostly to achieve an equitable global conversation in science. My research interests have always been linked to the concern for intellectual autonomy. At first, the autonomy of art in the Latin American avant-garde of the 1920s and particularly in the cultural-political trajectory of José Carlos Mariátegui, along with his renowned journal Amauta, was the main focus of my PhD dissertation. Afterwards, I turned to a sociology of academic dependency, observing the development of the social sciences in the 1960s in Chile, where Dependency Analysis was forged.
Progressively, since 2002, my research focused on the current state of academic fields and publishing circuits in Latin America, through a critical reading of Pierre Bourdieu. I started then to create a research program that today includes 11 researchers and 10 doctoral and postdoctoral students, working currently at the Research Center on the International Circulation of Knowledge (CECIC, for its Spanish acronym) that I founded in 2018. Several comparative studies directed by me in this research team during these years allowed us to account for scientific development in Argentina, Chile and Brazil. Results showed the co-existence of academic creativity along with heteronomy; hence what started as a search for academic dependency ended up as a quest for scientific autonomy, observed on par with the subordination extensively criticized in the Latin American intellectual milieu. My theoretical reflections on the structure of the academic world pointed out the segmentation produced by diverse circuits of recognition: a multiscale structure that was visible at the regional, national and institutional levels. Five concepts and fields of observation pave the way for the multi-scale and relational approach built along my academic trajectory: (a) the Bourdieusean concept field, (b) structural heterogeneity, (c) circuits of recognition, d) open science and (e) research assessment.
In recent years the next step took me, as a researcher and an activist for open science, into the tensions and asymmetries of the international circulation of knowledge which gained momentum with the UNESCO Recommendation of Open Science. My involvement with open access movement in Latin America led to my appointment as the chair of the UNESCO advisory committee for Open Science during 2020-2021. It was a major challenge to coordinate the discussions that finally ended in the draft project of the Recommendation that was approved by the UNESCO Conference in November 2021.
Currently, I am a Principal Researcher at the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET, Argentina), Head Professor at the National University of Cuyo (UNCuyo), where I am the director of the PhD program in Social Sciences, and the Director of the CECIC https://cecic.fcp.uncuyo.edu.ar/. I also serve as the chair of Argentina’s National Committee for Open Science, as senior advisor of the Latin American Forum on Research Evaluation (FOLEC-CLACSO) and as a part of the DORA group on National & International Initiatives.
SELECTED ACADEMIC AWARDS: Bernardo Houssay Science Medal (2003); CLACSO International Essay Contest, First Prize, Semi-senior category (2004); Honorable Award for Scientific Value-Argentine National Senate (2017).
MOST RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS (LAST 5 YEARS)
-Beigel, Fernanda (2017) “Científicos Periféricos, entre Ariel y Calibán. Saberes Institucionales y Circuitos de Consagración en Argentina. Las publicaciones de los Investigadores del CONICET” (bilingual), en Dados, vol. 60, N° 3, pp. 825 a 865. https://ri.conicet.gov.ar/handle/11336/41290
-Beigel, F., Gallardo, O. y Bekerman, F. (2018) “Institutional expansion and scientific development in the periphery. The structural heterogeneity of Argentina’s academic field”, Minerva, 56(3), 305-331. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-017-9340-2 .
-Beigel, Fernanda (2019) “Indicadores de circulación de la producción científica de las universidades: una perspectiva multi-escalar para visibilizar anclajes locales y promover alcances regionales”, en Ciencia, Tecnología y Política, Año 2 N° 3, https://doi.org/10.24215/26183188e028
-Beigel, F. Ed (2019) Key texts for Latin American Sociology, London: SAGE. https://ri.conicet.gov.ar/bitstream/handle/11336/111772
-Beigel, F. y Bekerman, F. (2019) Culturas evaluativas. Impactos y dilemas del Programa de Incentivos a Docentes-Investigadores en Argentina (1993-2018). ISBN 978—987-722-478-8. CLACSO-CONADU: Buenos Aires. https://ri.conicet.gov.ar/handle/11336/111044
-Beigel, Fernanda (2020) A multi-scale perspective for assessing publishing circuits in non-hegemonic countries, Tapuya: Latin American Science, Technology and Society, 4:1, https://doi.org/10.1080/25729861.2020.1845923
-Beigel, F. et Morales, J.J. (2020) Bourdieu en Chili. En Sapiro, Poupeau Dir. Dictionnaire international Bourdieu CNRS Éditions: Paris, p.153-154. https://www.cnrseditions.fr/catalogue/philosophie-et-histoire-des-idees/dictionnaire-international-bourdieu/
-Beigel, F. y Gallardo, O. (2021) “Productividad, bibliodiversidad y bilingüismo en un corpus completo de producciones científicas” (bilingual), Revista CTS, vol. 16, n° 46, p.41-71. http://www.revistacts.net/contenido/numero-46/productividad-bibliodiversidad-y-bilinguismo-en-un-corpus-completo-de-producciones-cientificas/
-Baranger, D. y Beigel, F. (2021) “La publication en Ibéro-Amérique en tant que mode d’internationalisation des chercheurs en sciences humaines et sociales du Conicet (Argentine)”, en Revue d’anthropologie des connaissances. Vol 15 (3) http://journals.openedition.org/rac/23440
-Persic, A. Beigel, F., Hodson, S. & Oti-Boateng, P. (2021) “The Time for Open Science is Now”, UNESCO World Science Report, ISBN: 978-92-3-100450-6, UNESCO: Paris, p.12-16. https://www.un-ilibrary.org/content/books/9789210058575c006/read
-Beigel, F. Packer, A. et alia (2022) “OLIVA: La producción científica indexada en América Latina. Diversidad disciplinar, colaboración institucional y multilingüismo en SciELO y Redalyc (1995-2018)” DADOS, volumen 67, número 1. https://doi.org/10.1590/dados.2024.67.1.307x (english) https://doi.org/10.1590/dados.2024.67.1.307 (Spanish)
-Beigel, F. (2022) “El proyecto de ciencia abierta en un mundo desigual”, Relaciones Internacionales, Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, N°50, p.163-181. https://revistas.uam.es/relacionesinternacionales/article/view/15331
-Beigel, Piovani y Almeida (2022) “Linguistic capital and doctoral formation abroad: a comparative study between Argentina, Brazil and Chile” (bilingual). Tempo Social. Vol. 34, N°3. https://www.scielo.br/j/ts/a/9qPXZB3JP7ZPC6KKY7sjv9p/abstract/?lang=en
-Beigel, F. Gallardo, O. (2022) Estudio de accesibilidad de las publicaciones argentinas y gastos en Article Processing Charges en la Agencia de I+D+i (2013-2020), Dossier 7, ISBN 978-987-4193-54-4, CIECTI: CABA. http://www.ciecti.org.ar/7-estudio-de-accesibilidad-de-las-publicaciones-argentinas-y-gastos-en-article-processing-charges-en-la-agencia-idi-2013-2020/
-Beigel, F. (2022) “José Carlos Mariátegui and the Latin American tradition”, in The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Human Sciences, edited by David McCallum.
-Vélez Cuartas G., Beigel, F. et al (2022) Argentine output in open access and APC payments (2013-2020), CONICET-COLAV: CABA. https://www.conicet.gov.ar/wp-content/uploads/INFORME-CONICET-Argentina-Publicaciones-y-Pagos-de-APC.pdf
– Beigel, F. (2023) “(Re) Opening social sciences: the challenges of Open Science” Global Dialogue (published in English, French, Hindi, Russian, Polish and Chinese), vol. 13, N° 1 https://globaldialogue.isa-sociology.org/uploads/imgen/3326-v13i1-english.pdf
-Beigel, F et Morales, J. J. (2023) Bourdieu au Chili: cosmopolitisme et catacombes. En Bourdieu dans les Amériques. Genèses et usage d’une internationale scientifique. IHEAL: Paris.