Cissi Askwall, Secretary General of VA, has been elected the
new President of EUSEA, the European Science Engagement Association.
As universities seek to strengthen their connections with their local communities, concepts like ’civic universities’ and ’public engagement’ can play a key role. To help inspire their members, VA together with the NGO
Unilink ran an
online conference on 12 November to gain a better understanding of these concepts in practice. The event featured speakers from both the UK and Sweden.
Sensemaking and quality were the focus of two
Swedish Rethinkerspace workshops run during October and November. The virtual workshops, led by VA as part of the
EU Rethink project, sought to dive deeper into how people make sense of science communication and ways to assess quality in digital science communication.
As the
EU BLOOM bioeconomy project comes to an end, we reflect on learnings and activities in the project, including the
work of the Nordic hub with its focus on the forest industry. A final online closing exhibition was held on 9 December to showcase the results of the project.
This year’s
Engage Festival, organised by the National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement in the UK, offered a week-long smörgåsbord of discussions, workshops, inspiring examples of practice and networking for those working with public engagement. VA contributed to two sessions, including one on the
ORION public dialogues, and
gained lots of inspiration throughout the event held online from 30 November – 4 December.
The results of the
Star-Spotting Experiment are
now available. In this citizen science project, young people in four European countries helped researchers to test a new method of measuring light pollution. Coordinated by VA, the mass experiment was run as part of European Researchers’ Night activities in Sweden, Spain, Ireland and the UK during 2019/2020.
EU-Citizen.Science, the European platform for citizen science, continues to grow. Anyone involved in citizen science is welcome to add details of
projects,
resources,
training and events to the website, or ask questions and start conversations with others through
the Community Forums.
The role of science in a changing world was the focus of
VA’s annual conference held digitally on 14 October. Guest speakers included the Swedish Minister for Higher Education and Research and a wealth of Swedish and international contributors, providing different perspectives on the role of science in the current crisis.
The
ORION Open Science Cafe, held during Berlin Science Week, served up five hours of digital twenty-minute micro-talks and activities for anyone interested in learning more about Open Science. The event was hosted by
ORION partner Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine. All the talks are now available to watch online.
The
RRING network, together with the
NewHoRRIzon and
ORION Open Science projects held an
online roundtable on 3 September, as part of the
Euroscience Open Forum 2020, to discuss opportunities for developing a global Responsible Research and Innovation Network. Anyone interested in joining a trial of a RRI global network is now
invited to join.
VA (Public & Science) has been awarded the
2020 Lars Salvius Prize. The prize of 100,000 SEK has been awarded annually since 1991 by the
Lars Salvius Society for outstanding contributions to science communication and popular science.
