Effie has 20 years of experience in research and innovation policy analysis including in particular EU research and innovation policies, evaluation / impact assessment of research policies and programmes and foresight studies. Effie has also taken up a special interest in social innovation especially in relation to grass-roots initiatives emerging in contexts of financial crises in the South of Europe but not only. Her interest in this area has been focusing on developing a typology of social innovation also in relation to other innovation types and examining its ‘position’ in the research and innovation systems and the consequent policy implications.