European experts re-think on the impact of research in social sciences and humanities in Can Jaumandreu
This week, the Social Sciences and Humanities Park of the UB is holding the fourth official meeting for the European project ACCOMPLISSH, part of the Horizon 2020 program, focused on the social impact of research carried out in the fields of social sciences and humanities. This meeting, to be held in Can Jaumandreu, gathers twenty-five members of the project, coming from twelve different European countries, apart from members of the industry, governments and social entities. The Social Sciences and Humanities Park of the UB is an important head office for the project ACCOMPLISH and it will held its closing ceremony in 2019.
This week, the Social Sciences and Humanities Park of the UB is holding the fourth official meeting for the European project ACCOMPLISSH, part of the Horizon 2020 program, focused on the social impact of research carried out in the fields of social sciences and humanities. This meeting, to be held in Can Jaumandreu, gathers twenty-five members of the project, coming from twelve different European countries, apart from members of the industry, governments and social entities. The Social Sciences and Humanities Park of the UB is an important head office for the project ACCOMPLISH and it will held its closing ceremony in 2019.
After a workshop-like working meeting during the afternoon of September 6, today September 7, the Executive Committee of the project will take place. The meeting was preceded by an institutional welcome chaired by the Vice-Rector for Equal Opportunities and Social Action of the UB, Maite Vilalta, together with the Director of the Sustainable Society of the University of Groningen and coordinator of the project, Sharon Smit, and the main researcher and coordinator of the ACCOMPLISSH UB team, Núria Serrat. Among the given tasks to the UB is the coordination of the dissemination, which will be carried out together with the University of Tallinn. Apart from members of the Social Sciences and Humanities Park, the ACCOMPLISSH UB team has researchers from the Research Group of Teacher Training and Pedagogical Innovation (FODIP), from the Faculty of Education.
During her speech, Maite Vilalta highlighted the value of ACCOMPLISSH as one of the initiatives to make visible the commitment of the UB with the revaluation of knowledge generated in the fields of social sciences and humanities to reinforce the position of these disciplines and their ability to create impact. This commitment is also visible with the participation of a structure such the Social Sciences and Humanities Park, which, as the Vice-Rector said, is one of the only existing places in Europe to act as a hub for innovation, knowledge transfer and research and cross and interdisciplinary training in social sciences and humanities.
Núria Serrat commented on the experience of participating in this project, and highlighted the collaboration activities of the UB team with social stakeholders in Catalonia. In this sense, she said they involved the Federació de Moviments de Renovació Pedagògica de Catalunya, the Public Administration School of Catalonia, Pere Tarrés Foundation, “la Caixa” Banking Foundation and Barcelona Activa. She also noted that this project does not only reinforce the existing collaboration links with social stakeholders but it also opens new ones and creates more opportunities to create joint projects. In her speech she also valued the communication workshop of the previous day, which was organized by the teams of the University of Tallinn and the UB, as coordinators of the dissemination activities of the project.
Sharon Smit remembered the idea of a European project such ACCOMPLISSH in the current context, in which global societies have to face complex problems. She mentioned some of these challenges such as the technological change, sustainability, governance, diversity or inequality. To find answers to these realities, Smit puts emphasis on the co-creation processes and collaboration between the university, industry, public administration and the third sector, from the field of humanities and social sciences.
This welcoming ceremony gave place to the plenary of the ACCOMPLISSH Executive Committee. The main topics of this meeting are the pooling of advances in action lines coordinated by each universities, and the detailed analysis of interaction processes with stakeholders that are involved in the project. At the end of the meeting, attendants can visit the facilities in Can Jaumandreu and see a practical case of social impact, through the experience of the Workshop of Baschet Sound Sculptures of the UB, to be presented by Martí Ruiz.
ACCOMPLISSH, which stands for Accelerate co-creation by setting up a multi-factor platform for impact from Social Sciences and Humanities, aims to create an innovative valorisation concept to strengthen the position and impact generation of social sciences and humanities research. In order to reach this goal, they work with stakeholders -potential research users- in co-creation, understood as collaborative creativity, so that the innovation process is carried out together with the different social stakeholders. All of this within the framework of the so-called Quadruple Helix (universities, private sector, public sector and third sector).
The meeting in Barcelona is taking place after half of the thirty-six months of ACCOMPLISSH, which started in March 2016. The information taken from some of the initial results of the study is currently under study. These results come from the first bibliographic work and group interviews with social stakeholders from the entities that collaborate with each of the European universities that take part in the project. New data and activities are being collected and organized so as to continue creating exchange tools between academia and stakeholders.