ABSTRACT
Inspired by studies in the Sociology of Science and Technologies, this chapter aims to describe my experience as an embedded researcher in different European expert networks and programmes in education. It focuses on the practical dimensions of expertise, in the appropriation of some categories and modes of reasoning, but also on some required social skills to be include and recognised in an epistemic community with its norms and expectations. It also highlights the framing of social encounters and negotiations, in procedures, devices, and a division of labour that control the production of knowledge as “deliverology” before it is publicised. The expert's multiple commitments correspond also to different ways of legitimising expertise in a collective enterprise and a translation process that disseminates knowledge well beyond its original production space. This politicisation and politicking are sequential steps to export expertise into a visible, readable, and accessible policy agenda and discourse of truth for laypeople and the public.
