Medical researcher named Sweden’s best science communicator 2019

Keivan Javanshiri, a medical researcher at the Department of Neuropathology at Lund University, has won the 2019 Swedish Researchers’ Grand Prix. He was awarded the title of Sweden’s best science communicator at the final held on 26 November in Stockholm. The winner was decided based upon the combined votes of the public and a jury.

17,000 celebrated European Researchers’ Night in Sweden

This year’s European Researchers’ Night, known as ForskarFredag in Sweden, took place in 30 cities across the country in September. Participants engaged in the Swedish events included 17,122 visitors, and 550 researchers and PhD students. The programme featured hundreds of free activities, all designed to highlight the diversity of research and its impact on our daily lives.

Read more and watch a short film about ForskarFredag

Forthcoming activities

If you are interested in Science Shops or Community-Based Participatory Research, come along to the SciShops symposium being held Brescia, Italy on 30–31 January 2020. The programme features skills development workshops, networking opportunities and discussions. The event is free to attend and registration is now open. 

Within the scope of the ORION Open Science EU project, VA is organising two public dialogues on genome editing in Stockholm on 23 January and 8 February 2020. The aim of the public dialogues is to discuss the risks and opportunities of disruptive technologies such as genome editing and identify any concerns the public might have. The workshops in Stockholm are the last of a series of dialogues held in the ORION partnering countries, Czechia, Germany, Sweden and the UK during 2019–2020.

The EU-Citizen.Science project, in which VA is one of 14 European partner organisations, is currently running two surveys. The first, consisting of eight short questions, is exploring what the field of citizen science looks like. The second is seeking to define what activities should be regarded as citizen science and participants are asked to classify a number of stories on different forms of public participation in research. The results will be used to develop a short briefing for research funders, policy bodies, and scientists. If you have engaged with citizen science, your input to both surveys would be most valuable.

Gustav Bohlin, a researcher at VA, has been appointed country-correspondent for Sweden in the European project Scientific Understanding and Provision of an Enhanced and Robust Monitoring system for RRI (SUPER MoRRI). The project aims to develop and improve methods for monitoring RRI-related activities in Europe. As country-correspondent, VA will be involved in data collection activities within the project.

VA’s recent activities

The results of the 2019/2020 VA Barometer, VA’s annual survey into the Swedish public’s general attitudes towards science and researchers were announced at an event on 12 December in Stockholm. The English version of the VA Barometer will be published in January 2020.

As part of the Global Week to #Act4SDGs, the BLOOM Nordic Hub ran a social media campaign to raise awareness about the bioeconomy and its positive impact on our daily lives. The idea for the campaign resulted from discussions at co-creation workshops in both Finland and Sweden on ways to increase public knowledge about the bioeconomy, organised as part of the EU BLOOM-bioeconomy project.

Science Shops were showcased as an innovative model for science-society collaboration at two events run by VA in October in Sweden. VA’s annual conference featured a presentation by Anna Kingston, Science Shop coordinator at University College Cork, Ireland. An in-depth workshop on how to set up and run a Science Shop was also run for Swedish organisations interested in the model. The events were run as part of the EU SciShops project.

The Star-Spotting Experiment, VA’s 2019 citizen science project investigating light pollution, was shortlisted for the international Falling Walls Science Engagement of the Year competition. Read an interview with Lena Söderström from VA about her experience of participating in the final held during the Falling Walls conference in Berlin.

A mix of Swedish science communicators of different backgrounds and perspectives met to discuss and investigate the current status of science communication on 6 December, when the first Swedish Rethinkerspace meeting was held within the EU-funded RETHINK project. The project is exploring ways to maximise the opportunities and overcome the challenges of digitalisation and open science within science communication practices.

In October, VA celebrated the publication of its 100th report since the organisation was founded in 2002. Studies and surveys are an important part of VA’s work, aimed at increasing knowledge about the relationships between science and society, as well as investigating specific societal groups’ attitudes and experiences related to communicating science. Although, mainly published in Swedish, a selection of publications or summaries are available in English, including VA’s annual Barometer.

On 20 September 2019, a climate march took place in Stockholm as part of the Global Week for Future. VA went along to speak to those involved in #ResearchersDesk, an initiative involving more than 50 Swedish climate researchers undertaking dialogue with the public on climate science, and filmed a short video.

VA’s recent publications and resources available in English

VA Barometer 2018/2019: An annual survey into the Swedish public’s general attitudes towards science and researchers. 2019/2020 Barometer results are to be published shortly.

VA information folder 2019: Information about VA and its members.

What is science? An animated YouTube clip from VA, aiming to foster understanding of how scientific progress is made.

Researchers’ views on communication and open science in Sweden
– a summary

VA in social media