The HEIRRI consortium meets in Barcelona: experiences on RRI and Higher Education
The 10th Consortium meeting of the HEIRRI project took place on the 13th and 14th December in Barcelona (Spain). The gathering was hosted by the Catalan Association of Public Universities (ACUP), who welcomed the rest of the project members to the Rectorate of the Pompeu Fabra University, located in the historical Plaça de la Mercè in the heart of the old town of Barcelona.
This 2-day meeting was a key moment to discuss important issues for the project, such as the coming 2nd HEIRRI Conference, which will be held in Vienna on the 27th April 2018. Under the title “Education towards a responsible society, transforming universities through RRI”, the 2nd HEIRRI Conference will present the results of nearly three years of project activities designed to promote the integration of RRI within the education of scientists, engineers and other professionals involved in the R&D process. The meeting was useful to discuss the 60 abstracts that have been submitted to participate at the Conference. The accepted abstracts will be published electronically at the HEIRRI website in the coming weeks, as well as the keynote speakers and the final programme. Free registration opened a few weeks ago and the Conference already counts with more than 190 registered participants. Do not miss out and register now here!
The meeting also focused on the current pilot experiences of the HEIRRI training programmes, which are being carried out by the institutions from the HEIRRI Consortium. From August 2017 and until March 2018, 5 HEIRRI members (Pompeu Fabra University, University of Split, University of Bergen, Institute for Advanced Studies and Aarhus University) are testing the educational materials for bachelor and master’s degrees, PhD programmes, a train the trainer cours, a summer school and one MOOC. Other Higher Education institutions from outside the HEIRRI Consortium, coming from Algeria, India, Germany, Spain, Bulgaria, Lithuania and Bosnia and Herzegovina, are participating on the pilot experiences as well. More information on these experiences will be available in a coming new section of the HEIRRI blog.
Other issues that were discussed are the dissemination actions of HEIRRI, available at the calendar section of the HEIRRI blog, and the coming international HEIRRI workshops ‘Facilitating reflection on RRI’, which will take place in Brazil and Mexico on January 2018. Both workshops are organized by the GUNi’s Regional Office in Latin America and Caribbean, together with the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) in the framework HEIRRI internationalization plan to spread the project amongst Higher Education Institutions outside Europe.
The increasing engagement in the Forum Online and in the HEIRRI main communication channels was celebrated as well. This participation involves more than 1.200 followers on Twitter, a substantial increase of subscribers to the HEIRRI newsletter and a broad dissemination of the 2nd HEIRRI Conference.
Other issues discussed during the meeting were the connection between HEIRRI and RRI Tools, the internal evaluation of the action and the future of the project.
Keep updated on the coming 2nd HEIRRI Conference final programme and on the advances of the project by following HEIRRI's social media (Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn) or visiting this blog www.heirri.eu We are looking forward to meeting you all at the 2nd HEIRRI Conference!
FlickR pictures album of the meeting.
