SPARK Research Presented to Spanish Parliamentary and Academic Groups

Insights from SPARK (Studying Parliaments and the Role of Knowledge) were presented recently (June 2026) to parliamentary and academic groups in Spain. SPARK is a grant-funded project examining the relationship between parliaments and knowledge in seven European legislatures.

Ewan Robertson, a postdoctoral researcher with SPARK, was invited to give presentations by several organisations during a fieldwork visit to the Spanish parliament’s Congress of Deputies. He was also hosted as a visiting researcher at the Complutense University of Madrid (Faculty of Information Sciences).

The first presentation was organised by Oficina C, the Congress of Deputies Science and Technology Office, as part of a seminar programme for researchers who have participated in the Oficina C’s parliamentary pairing scheme. Ewan gave an overview of SPARK and provided a comparative description of how different parliaments in Europe integrate expert knowledge. Reflecting on the other parliaments in the study, this focused in particular on the European, German and UK parliaments, drawing on research undertaken by the wider SPARK team.[i] This was followed by a question and answer session with researchers from various backgrounds who have directly engaged with parliamentary work in Spain.

The second seminar was held with academics from the Deliberative Democracy and Communication research group at the CEU Cardenal Herrera University. In addition to providing an overview of SPARK, Ewan’s presentation provided some early findings and thoughts from fieldwork on the Spanish parliament so far. This work includes compiling a database of invited committee speakers, interviews with a range of parliamentary actors, and undertaking ethnographic observations of parliamentary processes.

As SPARK progresses, the team looks forward to engaging further with researchers and practitioners in our fieldwork countries and beyond.

You can read more about our project activities and outputs on our resources page: https://www.project-spark.net/resources.

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[i] Geddes, M, Robertson, E., Bruyndonckx, M. and Broda, E. (forthcoming). Chapter 4: Bringing Expert Knowledge into Parliaments: Mapping organisational features in four democratic institutions. Chapter prepared for Organizing Science for Policy in Europe (eds. J. Christensen, V. Pattyn and C. Holst).