Now that we are halfway through the first cycle of research funding in the Alliance, it is an excellent time to look at the Re: ERUA’s activities and the challenges ahead.

What are we doing?

Build research expertise and a research strategy linked with Responsible Research and Innovation, and Research engagement.

• A two-day joint expert group meeting was held at UKON on Feb 7 and 8, 2023, to discuss new R&I approaches and promote experimentation on societal engagement and responsible research.
• Two Workshops on Alternative Excellence were organised to define our common strategy’s first steps for engaged and responsible research.
• The mapping of initiatives relating to innovation and societal engagement[1] has been the successful first step for identifying a new conceptualisation of RRI and giving dimension to the Research component of the Alliance. We warmly invite you to read it: Dupret, K., Eschweiler, J., Umantseva, A., & Hyldkrog, R. V. B. (2022). Mapping Innovation and Societal Engagement: – Responsible Research through a care ethics perspective. Roskilde Universitet. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.31722.59845

Toolkit for research collaboration

Re: ERUA is creating a Research portal to provide an overview of the research activities in the Alliance and to encourage the emergence of a real research community of the Alliance ERUA. The ERUA research portal will be available on the website ERUA in September 2023: https://archive.erua-eui.eu/

• A specific session will be open in September 2023 for research opportunities and calls. Researchers will be allowed to submit their collaborative needs as “classified ads” linked with the ERUA Research Portal to strengthen social innovation and RRI in all fields.
• Paris 8 University funded seven proposals this year, including research projects and events with ERUA partners. Information: https://archive.erua-eui.eu/2022/12/02/call-for-projects-at-uparis8-2023-with-the-label-erua/

The idea is that all partner universities propose a similar call or join this initiative to present more attractive amounts. This could be a springboard for more ambitious projects in the long term.

• A first Research support staff visit will be organised at Paris8 on May 30, June 1-2, 2023, to exchange good practices and discuss concrete cooperation actions in research support and exchange of good practices.

Toolkit for Open Science :

The SWOT analysis on Open Science highlights the different standing and degree of support on OS issues within the partner countries and universities. This is also a first step for good practice exchange and creating a network.

Contents on open science have been created for the research community on different topics and different kinds of material:

• Online Open Science meet-up has been organised every month. In this context, a publication in Open Access has been released, which bundles our experiences in organising and running the events and addresses “lessons learned”. We invite all interested parties to read it: Heber, M. (2023). Organising the ERUA Open Science Meet-Ups: Methods, Experiences and Lessons from the First Ten Months. LIBER Quarterly: The Journal of the Association of European Research Libraries, 33(1). https://doi.org/10.53377/lq.13319
• Open Science Fundamental Online Course[2] with eight individual modules have been developed and published on Zenodo. The course is easily reusable and modifiable by the partners.

More information about Open Science activities: https://archive.erua-eui.eu/open-science/

Develop a common competence framework for human capital in ERUA

We have identified the training needs of a small ERUA Early Career Researchers and Academic and Research admin staff sample. In parallel, we mapped skills supply and demand mismatches at the regional/local level

to understand the interrelationship between skills demand and supply for regional economies and to form appropriate regional typologies of business/innovation ecosystems. Those analyses will allow us to establish a typical charter and an action plan for Training Programs.

Where to find us?

You can find our activities on our website:  https://archive.erua-eui.eu/academic-staff/research-activities/

If you want to learn more or you are interested in collaborating, please send an e-mail to the Re-ERUA contact person in your university:

For Paris 8: Claire Douet – claire.douet02@univ-paris8.fr

For Roskilde – Katia Dupret – katia@ruc.dk

For Konstanz – Sonja Kralj – sonja.kralj@uni-konstanz.de

For AEGEAN – Eirini Papadopoulou – epapado@aegean.gr

For NBU – Dimitar Trendafilov – dtrendafilov@nbu.bg

[1] D3.3 Mapping of initiatives relating to innovation and societal engagement: https://nextcloud.univ-paris8.fr/s/2Mtpna6EN8p5LLW 

[2] D5.4 – Open Science Fundamental Online Course: https://nextcloud.univ-paris8.fr/s/2cWJ6EiHxfB7jCi