Rate My Professor Sotiria Grek

Professor Sotiria Grek is Professor of Science, Knowledge and Public Policy in the Urban Studies & Social Policy subject area within the School of Social & Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow. She holds a PhD in the sociological analysis of the measurement of adult learning in art administration and conducted postdoctoral research on the ESRC-funded project ‘Fabricating Quality in European Education’ from 2006 to 2009. Since 2007, her work has focused on quantification as a form of governance, developing analysis of European and international policy networks, data flows, governing instruments, and the role of international organisations as research and policy actors. Grek employs qualitative and quantitative methods to explore the interdependency of science, knowledge, and policy in social change. She has taught extensively in social science methods, mentored early and mid-career researchers, supervised doctoral studies to completion, and held key academic leadership positions.

Grek's research specializations encompass the role of data in shaping EU governance, international organisations in the quantification of global governance in education and sustainable development, epistemic infrastructures, new forms of expertise in global education policy, and the relationship between art and public policy including the production of policy knowledge through art. She is Principal Investigator on the European Research Council Starting Grant (2017-2022) for 'International Organisations and the Rise of a Global Metrological Field' (METRO, €1.2 million) and the Consolidator Grant (2024-2029) for 'Art and Policy in the Global Contemporary: Examining the Role of the Arts in the Production of Public Policy' (POLART, €2 million via UKRI funding guarantee). A Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE) and the Academy of Social Sciences (FAcSS), her influence is evident in major grants and publications such as 'The geopolitics of expert knowledge: analysing the European Commission’s role and influence in Indonesian higher education' (2025, with H. MacDonogh), 'Numbers as Utopia: Sustainable Development Goals and the making of quantified futures' (2024, with M. Tichenor and J. Bandola-Gill), 'The New Production of Expert Knowledge' (2024, Palgrave Macmillan), 'Governing the Sustainable Development Goals' (2022, with J. Bandola-Gill and M. Tichenor, Springer), and 'Prophets, saviours and saints: Symbolic governance and the rise of a transnational metrological field' (2020).