Speakers: Bjørn Bedsted, Jill Jäger, Jonas Krebs, Cristina Luís, Anna Olsson, Ines Vaittinen
Hosts: Joshua Cohen, Anne Loeber, Malene Vinther Christensen, Ulrike Wunderle
The urgency and relevance of engaging citizens in research and innovation is widely acknowledged. In EC R&I funding policies and in many universities’ ethical guidelines there is a call for public engagement. Moreover, researchers are themselves often highly motivated to engage with citizens. But how to do so? Where to find citizens to engage with, and how to organise the interaction in a productive and rewarding manner? This session provides answers to these questions by drawing on the experiences in the NewHoRRIzon project with stakeholder engagement.
The NewHoRRIzon project brought to light many reasons why stakeholder engagement is worth investing in, but also that it is often difficult to arrange in practice. This session will start off with an exploration of the reasons why it is worth investing time and energy in stakeholder engagement. We will discuss democratic considerations next to strategic and instrumental considerations, and touch on citizen science and co-creation processes. Most of all, we will discuss practical aspects of setting up processes of engagement in research. The session will offer opportunities to become acquainted with a number of methods to organize public engagement that are easy to apply. You are offered an opportunity to try out a concrete tool, out of a selection of tools as developed in the NewHoRRIzon project. The session comes with a free digital gift bag.
