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InSPIRES Project: New communities invited

InSPIRES partners are working to implement their Science Shop projects

“Our people is happy when we ask them to share their experience”, says Hichem Ben Hassinne, Institut Pasteur de Tunis. Through an on-line form in French and Arab generated with Tunisian NGOs and released a couple of weeks ago, this InSPIRES partner has already collected 24 questions that could kick-off several Science Shop projects. InSPIRES partners have also reported enthusiastic feedback in Bolivia, Hungary, The Netherlands, Italy, France, and Spain. InSPIRES is the Acronym for the project “Ingenious Science shops to promote Participatory Innovation, Research and Equity in Science”, launched in April 2017 (EU grant agreement No. 741677).

The project’s first Work Package called “to stage” has been leaded by the Environmental Social Science Research Group (ESSRG, Hungary). With the support of all the inspiring partners, ESSRG is trying to understand the past and history of Science Shops “from a transformative social innovation point of view”. Different narratives and stories have been collected in more than 45 interviews already conducted and 20 additional planned with established European Science Shops and other community based or participatory research and innovation initiatives. This baseline has been identified as crucial by Athena Institute–Vrije Universiteit (The Netherlands), partner that will lead InSPIRES WP3: Development and Piloting of new Science Shop Models and Methods (“Science Shops 2.0”).

InSPIRES partners are working to implement their Science Shop projects. Consortium’s leader ISGlobal (Barcelona Institute for Global Health) has started with an impact evaluation request on children’s “active transportation” and health, as well as a study on access to diagnosis and treatment for Chagas Disease among migrants living in Zaragoza. Chagas will also take the first Science Shop in Bolivia where partner CEADES (Ciencia y Estudios Aplicados para el Desarrollo en Salud y Medio Ambiente) will lead master students to questions raised in one rural Municipality.

Athena Institut (Amsterdam) and InSPIRES Implementation WP’s leader, IrsiCaixa (Barcelona), are working on HIV/Aids to develop research agenda priority settings for this topic. Both partners explore the possibility to organize a joint Transnational and Trans-disciplinary Science Shop project. ESSRG and Université de Lyon (UdL) are also exploring around a similar topic: social innovation initiatives. UdL, InSPIRES Education WP’s leader has received 15 new CSO’s demands.

UNIFI, exploring Science Shops opportunities on different topics (urban gardening with advance technology, diabetes and the perception of science in the society), has already launched its web page (http://science-shop.complexworld.net/) and will host the project next internal training meeting in November, 2017. Information about future InSPIRES activities, including webinars in several topics and languages, will be shared with LK members.