Book Description
Adrian Lockwood: Confessions of a Publicly Funded Regular
Adrian Lockwood did not set out to conquer Europe. He set out, mostly, to avoid a difficult conversation with his manager, Arthur, and somehow ended up managing an EU-funded research project instead—a promotion he neither expected nor, on reflection, entirely understood.
What follows is a rapid and largely accidental education in the untold rules of a parallel universe: one governed not by results, but by deliverables; not by expertise, but by the correct use of the word “synergy” in a Brussels meeting room. Adrian discovers that success in this world has less to do with research and rather more to do with knowing which fork to use, which conference has the best hotel, and how to disagree with a Swiss drone company without anyone noticing you’ve disagreed at all.
Along the way he collects a small cast of collaborators—Alexandre, the coordinator with a gift for optimism; Georgios, who knows absolutely everyone in Brussels; and a rotating supporting cast of consortium partners who may or may not be on his side—and slowly, mystifyingly, becomes rather good at all of it.
I Don’t Give a Toss is a comedy of committees: a sharp, self-satisfied tour through the strange and largely invisible world of European research projects, where the tourism is excellent, the paperwork is relentless, and nobody—least of all Adrian—is quite sure what any of it is actually for.
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