Spot on @RadioFreeTom. In 2011 Ann Marie Murphy and I tried to bridge the gap between the foreign policy community and academia by highlighting the role of #pracademics (someone who is both an academic and an active practitioner in their subject area) /1 nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/OutputFile/101…
https://twitter.com/radiofreetom/status/1589382907453661185
Combining theory and practice is one way to generate knowledge and understanding. I wrote my PhD thesis as an independent academic and practitioner employed by 🇩🇪 (BMZ, GTZ, CIM) and 🇨🇳 (CANGO) development agencies. But there are also real tensions between science & politics /2 
In most cases, academics do not start out as #pracademics, but gradually get more involved in policy-relevant work. Murphy and I described the spectrum from more theoretical and analytical work on the one hand to more practical and applied policy entrepreneurship on the other /3
Pracademics can help kickstart overdue academic debates and contribute to policy change. But this line of work also comes with very real risks. In politically partisan fields venturing into policy advocacy or policy entrepreneurship can be outright dangerous to one's career /4
Given such real risks to one's career it should not come to anyone's surprise that many academics would like to play it safe. @M_Terhalle has pointed out that in the German International Relations (IR) field the "theory-practice disconnect is evident" /5 link.springer.com/article/10.100…
Recent controversies in 🇩🇪 about the positions taken by IR scholars like @ulrikeguerot or @JohannesVarwick show how relevant the discussion about existing tensions between science & politics is. The gap could be bridged by more discussions about #pracademia and #positionality /6
In terms of #positionality, we have to have a debate about pre-scientific value orientations of scholars. They need to be made explicit & open to academic and public scrutiny. While this will turn the personal and professional political, I see no alternative to this approach /End
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