SciShops

SciShops is a EU-funded Horizon 2020 project that is developing new Science Shops across Europe. VA (Public & Science) is one of 18 European partners in this three-year project, which started in September 2017. Science Shops are a model of community-based research that facilitates research and knowledge transfer with and for society. 

Science Shops carry out independent scientific research in response to concerns experienced by citizens and local civil society in order to create new knowledge that can be used to better understand or tackle societal issues.  The SciShops project is exploring ways how different types of research organisations, such as universities, research institutes, non-profit organisations and even companies, can develop sustainable Science Shops.

Ten new Science Shops across Europe are being established. The project has also developed guidelines, best practices and training to help organisations wishing to set up Science Shops as well as a networking and knowledge sharing platform and twinning scheme.

The work that VA has been involved in to date has included developing a set of case studies of existing Science Shops, assembling a collection of RRI Tools for Science Shops, and conducting a worldwide survey on awareness and experience of community-based participatory research. VA also manages the project’s newsletter.

VA is currently promoting Science Shops within Sweden and intends to run a workshop about Science Shops in Stockholm in October. If you’d like to receive details, please get in touch with Helen Garrison.

VA will be running its first pop-up Science Shop on 1 July during Almedalen Week in Visby, Sweden. Throughout the day, researchers from Swedish research organisations will be encouraging visitors to stop by the pop-up Science Shop and discover how real world problems that they encounter in their daily lives and work can be turned into concrete research questions, and ultimately, new knowledge and solutions. Each year around 40,000 people from academia, politics and civil society descend on the island of Gotland in Sweden to discuss a wide range of current societal issues in a packed programme of seminars, debates and events.

Take a look at our information folder for more information about the project.
You can also read more about VA’s participation in the project in an interview with Helen Garrison.

Project Partners

For further information about the project, please contact Helen Garrison, Project Manager at VA.

Follow the Project on Twitter: @SciShops_EU, Facebook: @scishops.eu Or visit the project website.

You can read more about the project in the articles below:

| Av Helen Garrison

VA runs its first Pop-Up Science Shop at Almedalen

VA (Public & Science) ran its first pop-up Science Shop on 1 July during Almedalen Week in Visby, Sweden. Throughout the day, researchers from Swedish research organisations encouraged visitors to stop by the Pop-Up Science Shop to discover how research can be used to inform solutions to societal issues and to identify questions that they’d like to be answered by research.

Läs vidare

| Av Vetenskap & Allmänhet

Science Shops – pairing researchers and citizens to solve societal needs

Science Shops can be an effective model for developing mutually beneficial relationships between academia and society. By working together to find solutions to societal issues, students/researchers get to work on real-life problems and civil society organisations get access to research expertise and new knowledge.

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| Av Vetenskap & Allmänhet

New resources for Science Shops

As part of the EU SciShops project consortium, VA (Public & Science) has been helping to produce a range of resources to support both new and established Science Shops. The resources address various aspects of setting up and running a Science Shop and take into account different types of organisational models.

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| Av Vetenskap & Allmänhet

Awareness of science shops varies across Europe and between stakeholders

Awareness of science shops and community-based participatory research is much higher in Western Europe, than in other parts of Europe. Researchers are more likely to be familiar with these concepts than community organisations, the main beneficiaries, too. These are some of the results of a survey conducted by SciShops, a new Horizon 2020 project promoting the growth of science shops and community-based research in Europe. VA is a partner in SciShops and was responsible for conducting the survey.

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