CATALISI webinar: Public engagement and outreach

This session highlighted the challenges and best practices in fostering public engagement and effective stakeholder collaboration, particularly through the lens of ‘Living Labs’ methodologies.

 

Ciara O’Halloran | University College Cork: Engaging for Societal Impact

Ciara O’Halloran, a Programme Officer from University College Cork (UCC), shared insights from UCC’s work with the “UNIC: European University Alliance”, and its “Centre for City Futures.” This centre focuses on participation, engagement, and collaboration to address societal challenges and find impactful solutions through engaged research and learning.

  • The Quintuple Helix Model: Moving beyond the traditional triple (academia, government, industry) and quadruple (including public/civil society) helix, UCC embraces a quintuple helix, recognising the environment as a key actor in societal and ecological transitions.
  • Shifting from Dissemination to Co-production: Kira emphasised the importance of moving from simply disseminating information to genuinely co-producing solutions with all actors, fostering mutual value and shared decision-making.
  • The Power of Futures Thinking: UCC utilises “futures thinking” methods, inviting participants to imagine preferred futures (e.g., headlines for their city in 2050). This empowering approach, rooted in the idea that the future isn’t predetermined, encourages collaborative action towards desirable outcomes.
  • Practical Engagement – The Cork City Council Example: UCC partnered with Cork City Council on their Local Economic Community Plan (LACP). They developed a toolkit to build more dialogue and co-creation into the consultation process and ran dedicated co-creation sessions, which have been recognised as best practice nationally.
  • Overcoming Engagement Challenges: The most time-consuming yet crucial part of engagement is the initial “stakeholder mapping”. This requires significant time, leveraging existing networks (like those of the city council), and meeting people where they are, addressing barriers such as childcare or accessibility. It’s vital that engagement is relevant to participants, showing them a clear stake in the process.

Enoll’s Approach to Stakeholder Engagement

Miriam Chakron from Enoll (European Network of Living Labs) outlined their systematic approach to stakeholder engagement, crucial for co-creation and fostering innovation. She highlighted the importance of a flexible approach to engagement and a continuous learning process.

Key steps in Enoll’s methodology include:

  • Identifying and Engaging Stakeholders: This involves creating a comprehensive list of all affected stakeholders, documenting their influence and interest, and digging deeper into their motivations and needs.
  • Defining Goals and Responsibilities: Clearly outlining what you want to achieve together and who is responsible for engagement.
  • Tailored Communication: Understanding motivations and adapting communication strategies to avoid jargon and make information accessible to diverse groups.
  • Building Trust: Addressing potential obstacles such as stakeholder fatigue, ensuring transparency, and demonstrating how input will influence future decisions.
  • Co-creating Solutions: Based on identified needs, actively involving stakeholders in developing solutions, often through workshops and local activities.
  • Continuous Monitoring and Feedback: Regularly checking in with stakeholders and providing updates on progress to maintain engagement and ensure their contributions are valued.

The discussions highlighted that institutional transformation is a long-term process and that overcoming challenges requires learning, adaptability, and a shift in mentality within HEIs. The “small acts” of engagement, when multiplied, can lead to significant transformative change within communities and institutions.

Webinar: CoARA: a unique opportunity for a better [Open] research assessment

A recent webinar, organized within the context of the CATALISI project, focused on actionable strategies for the transformational pathway of higher education institutions, specifically addressing open science practices and the reform of research assessment. 

Laura Mentini from APRE introduced the CATALISI project, highlighting its goal of assisting universities in their institutional transformation within research and innovation governance. The project operates through four facilitators providing acceleration services and seven higher education institutions implementing and testing these changes. Key transformation topics include research careers and talent support (addressing lifelong learning, gender equality, and research assessment), research modus operandi (mainstreaming open science and public engagement), and financial sustainability. The webinar falls under one of the seven acceleration services: reinforcing human capital, capacity building, and outreach.

Dr. Elena Giglia, Head of the Open Science Unit at the University of Turin, presented on the crucial initiative of reforming research assessment in alignment with open science principles. She began by highlighting the problematic aspects of the current evaluation system, dominated by journal impact factors and the commercial exploitation of open access through high article processing charges (APCs). A short video illustrated the absurdity of the high costs associated with publishing open access in prestigious journals, questioning the true openness and accessibility of such a system.

Dr. Elena Giglia introduced COARA (Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment), an initiative launched in 2022 with over 700 signatories, including major research funders, universities, and other organizations. COARA’s main commitment is to move away from the inappropriate use of journal impact factors and rankings in research assessment. The presentation emphasized that the current research assessment criteria often lead to negative consequences, including a hyper-focus on publications in high-impact factor journals, potentially at the expense of research quality, integrity, and trust. 

Key principles and commitments of COARA include:

  • Recognizing the diversity of research activities and outputs: Moving beyond solely evaluating publications to include software, code, datasets, methodologies, and other research contributions.
  • Valuing quality over quantity: Emphasizing the rigor, reproducibility, and impact of research, not just the number of publications.
  • Promoting open science practices: Recognizing and rewarding researchers for engaging in open access, open data, open peer review, and other open science activities.
  • Fostering collaboration and engagement: Valuing teamwork, interdisciplinary research, and engagement with society.
  • Ensuring transparency and fairness: Promoting transparent assessment criteria and processes, and addressing potential biases.

Dr. Giglia showcased examples of how different countries and institutions are already implementing changes in research assessment, such as the Netherlands banning the impact factor and Horizon Europe discouraging its mention in project proposals. She stressed that COARA is not just another declaration but an agreement with concrete commitments and a timeline for action plans.

You can watch the full video and have access to the materials in the Learning Hub

Mobilization and Mutual Learning at Luiss: Exploring the Third Mission in the Framework of Open Science

Reframing the Role of Universities Through Participation and Openness

According to the UNESCO Recommendation on Open Science, “collaboration, participation, and inclusion” are part of the foundational principles of Open Science, the open approach to conducting, disseminating, and evaluating scientific research. A University that makes Open Research one of its core values must, in fact, experiment with participatory practices within its institutional processes. The Mobilization and Mutual Learning (MML) Event, organized in synergy with APRE and hosted by Luiss on October 17, 2024, witnessed this openness to experimentation and innovation of processes. With the idea of collaboration, members of the academic community, facilitators, and external stakeholders gathered with a common goal: raising awareness about the Third Mission and investigating related activities by exchanging of knowledge, skills, and best practices.

CATALISI operates, with the support of process facilitators, within Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) with the goal of their institutional transformation: specifically, the acceleration to be pursued over these three years in the fields of Research and Innovation will span multiple universities, strengthening collaboration and alliance between EU institutions. Aware of the importance of this synergistic journey, Luiss, as a partner of CATALISI, has chosen three thematic areas to focus on: supporting talent mobility, promoting Open Science and the digitalization of research, public impact, and attention to social challenges. Within the third thematic focus, Luiss dedicated the MML Event in October to the Third Mission—with a particular emphasis on research valorization and societal engagement—and chose to concentrate on identifying shared criteria to measure the effectiveness and impact of Third Mission activities in a European academic context.

Highlights of the Luiss MML Event

The event’s structure was designed to serve both as a moment of institutional reflection and international exchange. Its twofold objective was, on the one hand, to open a space for dialogue with European peers academies in order to position Luiss as a proactive agent of change; on the other hand, to strengthen internal coordination and mutual understanding among departments. The focus remained firmly on activities at the intersection of research and public engagement.

After an initial plenary session and institutional greetings, participants engaged in a series of collaborative workshops. The first was the “Alphabet Icebreaker,” in which three groups were tasked with associating a term linked to the Third Mission to each letter of the alphabet—creating, in effect, a shared lexicon to guide the day’s discussions. This activity set the tone for deeper engagement, establishing a common language around complex concept.

Next, an “Incremental Knowledge” session invited participants to analyze three central domains—Communication of Research, Commissioned Engaged Research, and Public Engagement Projects and Events—by reflecting on the impact they generate, how that impact can be measured, and the challenges inherent in doing so. Each group built upon the insights of the previous one in a cumulative process, creating a dynamic and coherent knowledge base. These participatory dynamics culminated in a final plenary feedback moment, where key findings were shared and contextualized.

Throughout the day, the active involvement of Luiss structures—such as the Research & Third Mission Office, the Library, the ESG Office, and the Lectures & Seminars Office—helped show how deeply the Third Mission is embedded in the university’s identity. This institutional commitment is not only strategic but also operational: from supporting Open Science to incentivizing outreach, and from coordinating research dissemination via social media to curating the Research & Third Mission Newsbook, Luiss has consolidated an integrated and outward-looking approach to research impact.

From Workshop to Strategic Action

Beyond knowledge sharing, the MML event also served as a springboard for institutional development. Insights gathered during the day will inform the creation of a new impact assessment framework at Luiss, incorporating key performance indicators to better track and evaluate Third Mission outcomes. Moreover, the event’s success has sparked interest in replicating the MML methodology in future contexts, extending its use beyond the CATALISI project to address other strategic priorities within the university.

Ultimately, the Luiss MML Event demonstrated how open, collaborative formats can play a critical role in rethinking the role of universities in society. By fostering shared language, shared challenges, and shared solutions, Luiss reinforced its vision of a university that listens, learns, and leads in shaping the future of responsible research and innovation.

“This event was a meaningful opportunity to showcase how deeply the Third Mission is embedded in the identity of Luiss; today, the social impact of research stands as a testament to the strength and maturity of this institutional sensitivity.”