International Science Shop Network
An EU-sponsored workshop on “Living Knowledge: The International Science Shop Network” was held on the basis of a working document entitled “Science, society and the citizen of Europe”. The document calls for involvement of patient’ associations, transport user groups and consumer organisations in defining and monitoring research activities and programmes that bring research and society together and helps to ensure that results match needs. More than 120 “science shoppers” and scholars from community-based research groups met in Leuven (Belgium) for a three-day meeting to discuss the creation of an international and a European network in tandem. See the nice portal at http://www.bio.uu.nl/living-knowledge/. Participants came mainly from the northern part of the EU, Canada and the USA, and from South Africa where this same concept is also used, with a few individuals from other countries (e.g., Japan, Israel). European science shops are very much alive in The Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Denmark, and the UK.
Part of the immediate value of the meeting was the cross-connection with other, but similar activities in the USA and Canada. The latter are better known under the title community-based research centers. Of course, Dick Sclove has been a champion in communicating about these developments and the LOKA institute http://www.loka.org/ therefore has been part of the consortium from the beginning (as have been the South-African, Rumanian, and Israeli initiatives).
The participants to the meeting agreed on a working definition of the common denominator which was formulated as follows: “A science shop provides independent, participatory research support in response to concerns experienced by civil society.” Among other things, the LOKA institute is extending its database so that it can serve the European science shops as well, and in collaboration with them. The Science Shop in Bonn has taken the initiative of launching an international journal entitled “Living Knowledge”. A test issue was available at the conference.
Noteworthy is the Canadian program Community-University Research Alliances (CURA) of the Social Science and Humanities Research Council if only because of its size of Can.M$ 24. The officer of this program, Peter Levesque, chaired part of the meeting informing us, among other things, that this money had already leveraged Can. M$ 32 from other sources, and the Can. Institute of Health Research has put in another Can. M$ 36, which may have an even larger leverage. Large-scale operations were also reported from the US-side. For example, Philip Nyden reported about the Center for Urban Research and Learning at the Loyola University of Chicago.
The present confluence of momenta seems to set a window for organizing not-commercially interested R&D with an academic orientation and with the wish to use academic freedom for serving the larger community. The representative of the science shop in Tilburg (The Netherlands) reported that this university has used the science shop questions for many years as a window for university research policies. These have entailed the funding of PhD places in case departments, clients, and the shop could agree on a mutually relevant research project. He reported, for example, on a project about water-management in rural areas that was taken up as a PhD project in the department of economics.
Let me also mention in this context our colleague Nicole Farkas of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy (NY) who devotes her PhD project with support of the NSF and the EU to writing the history of this development. But it seems to me that we owe particular gratitute to the science shoppers and volunteers at the various universities who have kept the idea alive in a period when commercialization and fund-raising have often so dominated academic agendas. The change of the agenda at the European level was manifest by the presence of Rainer Gerold, the new Director of Science and Society in the Research Directorate-General in Brussels. The vitality of this conference technically organized mainly by Utrecht (and Groningen in collaboration) will show off. The spirit is highly academic and research-oriented. On the agenda are issues like “quality control,” “impact on higher-education and research,” “internationalization,” etc.
A next conference will be hosted by the science shop of the two Northern-Ireland universities in January 2003. We hope to be able to meet also colleagues from Latin America and other parts of the world. Oh: let me mention Rumania: a science shop in collaboration with Groningen made possible with the help of funding of the Dutch ministry of foreign affairs. But this has to be an email. Look at the website (http://www.bio.uu.nl/living-knowledge/) if you wish to see more details. The email-list is accessible at
http://listserv.surfnet.nl/archives/livingknowledge.html (without the hyphen!). One can access and unsubscribe or browse through the archive.
author’s address: loet@leydesdorff.net