The research system is in an unusual moment. The institutions that have governed science for the past half-century face pressure from several directions at once: political attacks on public funding, artificial intelligence compressing research timelines and reshaping careers, declining public trust, and a growing body of evidence that the incentive structures produce systematic distortions. The global metascience field is producing serious knowledge about what works, and a first generation of institutional experiments is generating results: new funding mechanisms, new organisational forms, new ways of structuring research careers.
Translation is the gap between these developments and the institutions that need to act on them. The global conversation about research system reform is rich but dispersed. The Danish and Nordic context has distinctive features that require specific knowledge to read clearly: enterprise foundations with structural independence, a small open research system unusually exposed to what happens elsewhere, and a policy debate that is only beginning to ask the questions the international field has worked on for a decade.
I have spent several years building systematic knowledge of this field. I maintain a continuously updated mapping of the global metascience ecosystem, currently covering more than 200 organisations across funding, institutional design, research evaluation, and open science, and write primers on the concepts and mechanisms that matter for anyone trying to understand or reform how research is organised. My PhD was on systems change and mission-oriented sector development. I write for policy and public audiences in Danish and English, and keep up a reading practice that makes it possible to answer questions quickly and accurately when they arise.
What I can offer takes four forms.
Research and mapping
If you are trying to understand what is happening in a particular area of the research system, what funding models are being tried, what institutional forms are emerging, what the evidence says about a design question you are facing, I can produce structured analyses, literature syntheses, and comparative frameworks, updated continuously. This is the work I do anyway; the question is whether it answers something you need answered.
Advisory and strategy
Structured advisory input on programme design, institutional positioning, or strategy development, from a one-off conversation to sustained engagement. I have a particular focus on foundations: the question of what structural freedom is actually for, and what the experimental agenda in research funding concretely requires. Universities and research institutions working through a changing ecosystem are equally within scope: understanding where you sit relative to what is being built elsewhere is increasingly a strategic question.
Writing and communication
Op-eds, reports, briefings, and primers, in Danish and English. I write for specialist audiences who want analytical depth and for decision-makers who want clarity. I write on metascience and research policy for Danish policy and public audiences, and I edit and co-author with institutions that want rigorous, readable output.
Speaking and facilitation
Talks, panels, and workshops for foundations, universities, research agencies, and conferences. I bring the evidence base from the global metascience field into Danish conversations about the research system and institutional design, and facilitate discussions that benefit from someone who has read the primary literature.
Foundations, particularly those asking what their structural independence is actually for, what the difference between coordinating and experimenting looks like in practice, and what it means to act as a metascientific entrepreneur.
Universities and research institutions working through a changing ecosystem, trying to understand where they fit relative to what is being built elsewhere, and what the new institutional forms mean for their own design choices.
Research agencies and councils seeking orientation in the global field of funding mechanism innovation and institutional experimentation, and wanting to understand what the evidence says before committing to a direction.
Journalists and communicators looking for a reliable source on metascience, research policy, and institutional design who reads the primary literature and writes in Danish and English.
Reach out at davidhilmerrex@gmail.com or +45 30271851.
The metascience mapping and primers are at davidhilmerrex.nu/metascience.