European Research Council awards researchers for excellence in public engagement and outreach
Raising awareness of and informing and educating the public on science-related topics is becoming an increasingly important skill for researchers. It is this very competence – public engagement – that the ERC acknowledges through its Public Engagement with Research Award. The dedicated website defines public engagement “as the involvement of the public in the design, conduct or dissemination of activities funded by the ERC. Engagement is a two-way process, involving interaction and mutual understanding for mutual benefit.” As part of their contractual agreements, ERC grantees are responsible for communicating their projects. Mariska Kret, Jonathan Tennyson and Alpa Shah were recognised for effectively communicating their ERC-funded research. The winners were chosen by an external jury. The public was also able to vote for their favourite project. Each laureate received a prize valued at EUR 10 000. The award ceremony took place on 14 July as a hybrid event of the EuroScience Open Forum.
Inspiring citizen science and careers
As part of the CoPAN project, Prof. Kret of Leiden University, the Netherlands, won in the category ‘Involve (citizen science)’ for RecognizeYourself. In their research, she and her team involved zoo visitors to raise awareness about apes’ emotional abilities. They established the first ape testing set-up in a Dutch zoo. The public watched as the apes carried out the same computer tasks they themselves had completed earlier. Prof. Kret also designed a Psychology Lab on Wheels with the help of local secondary schools. By going on the road for various outreach activities, people now have a better understanding of the importance of emotions in humans and apes. University College London’s Prof. Tennyson won in the category ‘Inspire (public outreach)’ for Orbyts. As part of the ExoMolHD, ExoMol and ExoData projects, this innovative programme aimed to inspire careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) by engaging over 1 000 students across the United Kingdom. PhD mentors worked with students, particularly underrepresented groups and girls, in schools with low STEM uptake. Thanks to Orbyts, more girls took advanced level physics. The initiative has inspired similar projects in countries such as Australia and Hungary. In 2021, Orbyts won in the ‘Widening Access Initiative (Outreach)’ category during the United Kingdom’s 8th annual National Education Opportunities Network Awards.
Challenging inequality, countering oppression
The CounterOppression initiative won in the category ‘Influence (media and policy)’. Designed by Prof. Shah from the London School of Economics and Political Science under the UNDERINDIA project, she led a team of social anthropologists to improve the public’s awareness of caste oppression in India and the close relationship between economic growth, class relations, and identity-based oppression and exclusion. To enhance policy, she contacted many different policy actors, including NGOs, the International Labour Organization and Members of Parliament in the United Kingdom. A visual exhibition displayed in Italy and the United Kingdom reached over 50 000 people, improving their understanding of the unpleasant and harmful aspects of economic growth and how it is closely connected with social oppression. The Association for Political and Legal Anthropology awarded the 2020 APLA Book Prize in Critical Anthropology to Prof. Shah for her book ‘Nightmarch: Among India’s Revolutionary Guerrillas’. It looks at why poor indigenous people in India took part in an armed leftist guerrilla insurgency and demonstrates why they were wrongly characterised as terrorists, imprisoned and killed. This work also succeeded in attracting attention from major media and bridging academia and the wider world. For more information, please see: CoPAN project ExoMolHD project ExoMol project website ExoData project UNDERINDIA project
Keywords
CoPAN, ExoMolHD, ExoMol, ExoData, UNDERINDIA, public engagement, outreach, Research Award, European Research Council
