The EU-funded project BETTER Life aims to foster socially engaged research in life sciences as a strategy for tackling diverse societal challenges. This project responds to the need to create enabling conditions for early career researchers to implement transdisciplinary research involving societal stakeholders (academia, business industry, governments, and civil society). As part of the first stage, the project sets the basis by defining the framing dimensions and standards for socially engaged research. These elements will set a panorama of the aspects in which the project will have a potential impact.
Socially Engaged Research
Socially engaged research is not a methodology or procedure with predefined techniques and strategies. It is a strategic approach to the definition, planning, management, and execution of a research agenda, in which there are meaningful interactions with societal stakeholders. This approach is rooted in the so-called “mode 3 of knowledge production”, a paradigm that extends beyond the dichotomy of theoretical/applied research by using multi-stakeholders, multi-systems, multi-networks, and multi-levels of knowledge in the processes of creating knowledge and solutions for society, businesses, and industry.
Socially engaged research requires enabling conditions (circumstances that facilitate adoption, implementation, and effectiveness) at the institutional level. This means that research units go beyond the “ivory tower” of their intuitional bubbles, have established regional networks, build trust with their local stakeholders, and play a role in the regional development where the institution is located. Of course, this requires efforts beyond the individual work of specific project researchers. It requires conceiving research from both theoretical and social perspectives in constant dialogue with its context.
The Framework for Socially Engaged Research
As one of the key steps in setting the scene for the BETTER Life project, the team has worked on defining the dimensions of what is to be understood as socially engaged research. For this purpose, the consortium has explored diverse frameworks and developed workshops to define a framework useful for institutions, researchers, and other stakeholders to make sense of the elements involved in socially engaged research.
As a first approach, the consortium preliminarily identified four key dimensions and twelve subdimensions.
-Institutional environment: Support structures, research capacities, and contextual knowledge.
-Stakeholder engagement: involvement of societal stakeholders, networking and collaboration, and shared power.
-Relevance of research: contextual relevance, scientific relevance, and quality assurance measures.
-Impact of socially engaged research: instrumental benefits, conceptual outcomes, and enhanced local capacities.
Want to know more? Consult the BETTER-Life E-zines here: https://betterlifehorizon.eu/e-zines/
