CHARM-EU: A Challenge-driven and Research-based Universities Alliance

University of Barcelona (one of the partners of CS_NOW) is leading the EU project called TORCH, Transforming Open Research and Innovation through CHARM. As described in their website: “TORCH is the research arm of CHARM, a university alliance that aims to explore new venues for the university of the future with a focus on pressing issues: climate change, sustainability, gender gap, inclusion and equity.” The description continues with: “To construct this new future we envision, universities have to enable civil engagement, promote citizen science and establish a positive dialogue with stakeholders.”

For this reason, the effort of UB in preparing training resources within CS_NOW will be aligned with TORCH broad ambition. In fact, this ambition is very much aligned with the final conclusions of the Deliverable Needs Assessment and Future Foresight Report on Citizen Science led by Bespoke. Training currently preparing will connect universities with civil society organizations and imagine how they can collaborate. This effort is also linked with the previous post talking about CoAct, a project that finished last December 2022. We firmly believe that the challenges and quick changes that universities will face in a near future will require further collaboration with civil society organization to make knowledge actionable and consider research as a knowledge co-production process. These challenges situate Citizen Science in a privileged position but then we need both researchers and civil society actors trained with new skills and competences.

Additionally, UB has also built an IDP-ICE working group of about 30 researchers already involved in citizen science projects and from more than 5 different faculties. The IDP-ICE working groups are generally formed by academics and professionals who share common objectives on a certain area or theme. These working groups collaboratively around a shared project and in this case we understand as shared project the creation of the CS_NOW training program. This will a way to start building a community within the university and hopefully the first step towards a stable collaboration with civil society actors.

This is how we would like to contribute to the future transformation of our universities and see universities as an important place to contribute to societal challenges.

Resources

Link to TORCH https://www.charm-eu.eu/torch

Link to the working group https://www.ub.edu/idp/web/ca/ciencia-ciutadana