European Researchers’ Night to spark scientific curiosity across Sweden

A week of exploration and discovery awaits visitors in 30 locations across Sweden at this year’s Swedish European Researchers’ Night, actually spanning the whole week from 25 to 30 September. ForskarFredag, Sweden’s most widespread science festival, will provide thousands of school pupils and members of the public with opportunities to discover more about the crucial role of research in our daily lives and meet the researchers behind it.

Meet VA’s new Secretary-General

VA’s new Secretary-General, Ulrika Björkstén, officially took up her position on 14 August. She brings a wealth of experience from her previous roles, joining VA from Sveriges Radio (Swedish Radio), where she worked as a science commentator and, before that, as Editor-in-chief of the Science Newsroom.

Current activities

Online science café to explore our relationship with the ocean
Anyone is welcome to join researchers from Sweden and Malta in an online science café on “Meeting the oceans” on 29 September at 14:00 CET for an interdisciplinary discussion about the changing oceans and our relationship to them. This is one of a number of pan-European collaboration activities that VA is involved in as part of this year’s European Researchers’ Night. Read more

Whole of Sweden invited to help research plastic pollution
In this nationwide citizen science project, thousands of members of the public and school pupils are collecting and analysing plastic litter in order to help researchers map the extent of plastic litter in the Swedish natural environment. The Plastic Experiment is part of ForskarFredag, European Researchers’ Night in Sweden, and is being run by VA in collaboration with the Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation and the University of Gothenburg. Read more

VA’s ‘Borrow a researcher’ featured in Horizon magazine
VA’s extremely popular ‘Borrow a researcher’ initiative, whereby hundreds of teachers across Sweden book researchers to visit their classes, is featured in an article published in Horizon, the EU research and innovation magazine. You can also read about activities taking place in other countries around Europe as part of this year’s European Researchers’s Night. Read more

Empowering citizen action for clean air through visualisation
In the CitizAir project, VA is collaborating with the City of Stockholm and KTH Royal Institute of Technology to create a novel tool to engage citizens in real-time air quality monitoring. Through an augmented reality experience involving an app and public screens around the city, citizens will have access to air pollution data, helping them to select the healthiest routes. The tool will be launched in Spring 2024, with co-creation workshops with Stockholmers currently underway. Read more

VA’s recent activities

LOESS kick-off meeting: Co-creating educational materials to promote soil health in Europe
The EU project LOESS aims to increase public interest and knowledge about soil health. Over three years, a range of stakeholders and target groups will be involved in identifying knowledge gaps in soil education and co-creating learning materials. VA is one of 20 partner organisations that met together in July to officially launch the project. Read more

Citizen attitudes to new technologies – insights from TechEthos
In a series of science cafés and scenario game workshops run in six European cities, including Stockholm by VA, the EU TechEthos project has been exploring public awareness, attitudes and values towards new and emerging technologies. Findings from these citizen engagement activities, which will be used to inform ethical guidelines, are now available. Read more

Guest blog: Reflections from the Tea Tales project
Citizen science as a collaborative process is often described as a win-win, but who is winning what? Judish Sarneel, an ecologist at Umeå University, shares her experiences of running citizen science projects and reveals a new citizen science-based tool for soil health, which VA has been helping to develop as part of the Tea Tales project. Read more

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