Author: Leonidas Ananiadis

We support the European Research Area aimed at creating a single, borderless market for research, innovation and technology in the EU.

The year 2025 marks the 25th anniversary of the European Research Area (ERA) – a milestone in building a unified, borderless space for research, innovation, and technology across the EU.

As part of this celebration, POIESIS is pleased to highlight the ERA Platform, launched in 2024. This platform serves as a central hub for information on the ERA Policy Agenda, EU-wide initiatives, and the ERA monitoring mechanism. It also offers access to key documents and resources supporting collaboration among researchers, innovators, policymakers, and citizens.

We encourage our visitors to explore the ERA Platform and learn more about the efforts driving research excellence in Europe. Click here to navigate to the ERA Platform

Last week in Aberdeen, POIESIS was strongly represented at the Public Communication of Science and Technology conference (PCST2025). Project members presented and discussed how research integrity and public engagement matters for public trust in science, and the crucial role of science communication for bridging science and society.

Tine Ravn joined sister projects VERITY and IANUS to explore the role of science communication in fostering trust in science, highlighting that while trust in science is high science communication plays a crucial role in maintaining this trusting relationship.

Marta Entradas presented findings on integrity in science and its impact on public trust, arguing that transparency is key to fostering public trust and that the channels through which science communication is received are highly consequential for the perceived trustworthiness.

Anne-Sophie Behm-Bahtat shared insights into citizens’ views on participation across Europe, revealing misalignments between public and expert perceptions of science engagement and demonstrating how participation is not perceived as universally positive.

Finally,Simon Fuglsang examined whether institutional commitment to good scientific practice strengthens trust in science, finding that while university commitments do matter for trustworthiness, the finer details of such commitments are less impactful.

This stunning visual by Miriam Barton captures the essence of 2 powerful days of dialogue, collaboration, and reflection at the Joint Final Conference of IANUS, POIESIS and VERITY, held on May 13–14, 2025, in Brussels.

Hosted at Talk C.E.C., the event marked the final milestone of 3 Horizon Europe projects united by a shared mission: fostering public trust in science.

From keynote insights to World Café debates, this live graphic recording visualizes what emerged during the conference: 
– Bridging science & society;
– Creating inclusive, transparent policy;
– Empowering actors as Stewards of Trust;
– Challenging misinformation and promoting critical thinking;
– Strengthening public engagement in research. 

The sketch reflects conversations with a diverse mix of voices: policymakers, researchers, civil society leaders, citizen scientists, and EC representatives, including powerful contributions from UNESCO to European Commission, and more.

Below you can watch a wrap-up of these exciting 2 days:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MuS7MLAilp4

The POIESIS Scenario Workshop on May 14th in Talk C.E.C., Brussels marked the conclusion of a wonderful 3-year journey of engagement activities and studies across Europe.

Discussions and remarks from the research experts and policy makers who took part, right after the IANUS | POIESIS | VERITY Final Conference were very fruitful, and will help us greatly in our efforts to refine POIESIS final recommendations for tackling societal mistrust in science!!

Tine Ravn gave a short presentation of the POIESIS previous research activities and of the projects’ early recommendations. Eleni Spyrakou moderated the event.

Participants were divided into 3 tables, each one examining a different case, based on the POIESIS early recommendations. A plenary discussion followed, with participants trying to identify common themes among the aforementioned cases. Then, a new split into 3 tables followed based on the themes identified (Collaborations and Competing Interests, Different types of the public and means of involvement, the importance of science’s self promotion and the limits of expertise).

The workshop concluded with valuable insights for forming the final version of the POIESIS Recommendations.

The IANUS | POIESIS | VERITY Final Conference was held with great success on May 13th and 14th at Talk C.E.C., Brussels.

The Conference started with Michael Arentoft, Head of the Directorate-General for Research and Innovation Unit of the European Commission giving the keynote speech “Fostering Trust In Science?”, while in the second session “Building bridges, strengthening trust” participants had a welcome and a brief introduction to the event by EC Officers Georgios Papanagnou and Wainer Lusoli, along with the sister project co-ordinators.

Sister projects were on the spotlight for the “Setting the scene: Trust in Science in and beyond the sister projects” where Tine Ravn of POIESIS, Hub Zwart of IANUS, and Agata Gurzawska of VERITY presented their projects’ research and main findings taking valuable feedback from Former European Commission Official and Chairman of the MLE Science for Policy Rene Von Schomberg and many other important external speakers.

The “Advancing Policy, Implementing Recommendations: IANUS, POIESIS, and VERITY’s three-year journey panel session featuring Juliana Chaves Chaparro (UNESCO), Anastasia Deligkiaouri (JRC), Jim Dratwa (EC), Suzanne Dumouchel (EOSC/OPERAS), Shaofeng Hu (UNESCO), Georgios Papanagnou (EC), and Maciej Woszczyk (NCBR/INSPIRING ERA) was moderated by the events’ organiser Steffi Friedrichs (AcumenIST) was extremely helpful and fruitful in exploring how policy frameworks can meaningfully support and strengthen trust in science. A panel with such experience could only provide deep insights into how policy frameworks can meaningfully support and strengthen trust in science.

The last but not least session of Day 1, the World Café was presented by Eleni Spyrakou of POIESIS and Kalypso Iordanou of IANUS and was smoothly moderated by Lisa Häberlein of EUREC and VERITY. Gabor Szüdi and Evren Yalaz from VERITY, Hendrik Berghäuser and Amalia Kallergi from IANUS, Simon Fuglasang and Richard Woolley from POIESIS facilitated the discussions in the 6 tables of the World Café, which provided many interesting uptakes and thorough discussions around Trust In Science, impact and sustainability.

The last concluding session on Day 2 (May 14th) was moderated by Hendrik Berghäuser of IANUS. The World Café tables rapporteurs shared their insights and brief summaries of yesterday’s discussions, while the Conference closed with Miriam Barton presenting the wonderful graphic designs which summarised the fruitful discussions of the Conference and the sisters projects recommendations for Strengthening Trust In Science in Europe.

The POIESIS Scenario Workshop, the final stage of the POIESIS research activities will start right after the conclusion of the IANUS|POIESIS|VERITY Final Conference on May 14th in Brussels (14:00 CET, Talk C.E.C., 141-143 Chaussée de Wavre, 1050 Ixelles-Brussels)!!!

The aim of the Scenario Workshop is to collect feedback from research policy makers and research experts on the POIESIS policy recommendations for tackling societal mistrust in science and for strengthening the co-creation of Research & Innovation contents by society.

The Scenario Workshop will comprise of two main parts;

The first part will consist of 3-4 break-out groups, depending on the final number of participants, followed by a plenary session. In the break-out groups partcipants will be given cases involving issues of research integrity and science communication and the participants will be asked to identify which POIESIS recommendations are pertinent to these cases. The aim of this part will be  the specification of potential implications of the suggested recommendations to be discussed in the second part.

The second part will consist of thematic groups discussing the identified recommendations, followed by a plenary session to decide on the best proposals for their improvement and suggestions for concrete actions.

POIESIS Team met for the past 2 days at the beautiful city of Valencia, in Casa de la Sciencia of INGENIO (CSIC-UPV).

This marked a big step forward for our research project, as we collectively discussed the key findings of each of our engagement activities (public and expert workshops, expert interviews, focus groups and deliberative roundtables, and a large survey experiment) towards forming a set of policy recommendations and actions points for tackling societal mistrust in science and for strengthening the co-creation of research and innovation contents by society!

We can’t wait for the last few months of the project, and our final research findings!!

The POIESIS research team produced an analytical aide memoire towards recommendations about how institutions can promote responsible research to enhance trust in science.

This comes as a result of elaborated research that was both qualitative and participatory, and included 22 Focus Groups, at least 3 in each POIESIS consortium country which involved 130 institutional stakeholders. Those were followed by 7 Roundtable Workshop (one in each country) with 84 participants in total which were fed on institutional priorities that were recognised by the aforementioned Focus Groups.

While results differed quite significantly from one context to another, there were some key priorities recognised through this research:

Regarding Research Integrity to: a) implement clear guidelines, codes of conduct and promote shared research integrity standards across institutions and countries, b) implement continuous, career-long training and education programmes for students, scientists, but also other professionals working in the institution, and c) to ensure a culture of transparency regarding the institutional handling of misconduct.

On the topic of Organisation of Science: a) to increase administrative support throughout the research process, covering areas such as budget management, external collaboration and relations, and data management, b) to encourage scientific institutions to address the organizational tensions, conflicting imperatives they contribute to generate, c) an in-depth revision of the performance evaluation system towards more qualitative measures, d) to ensure science independence and to develop public conversation about the private funding of universities and research organisations, and d) to protect own members, and particularly scientists, from external attacks.

On the field of Social Integration on Science to: a) provide scientists with the necessary knowledge and resources to engage in a sustainable and meaningful process of social integration, b) promote collaborative spaces and buildings: buildings should be designed and built to favour openness, c) develop and consider new ways of consulting citizens at local and regional level, d) implement the inclusion of scientific knowledge in school curricula – the only moment in life when all societal groups can be reached simultaneously – but also foster life-long learning opportunities in this regard.

Concerning Science Communication, key priorities are: a) to act both at global and local levels combining comprehensive participation with mass dissemination, b) to use institutional communicators to make citizens aware of research in the early stages, c) to avoid assuming a “crisis of trust”, it is a strong and problematic term: talk of crisis can be self-fulfilling and is best avoided.

This aide memoire, along with the findings of the secondary data analysis on public trust in science provided on POIESIS D1.5: Integrity, Integration, and Institutions for Trust: Reflections Based on Secondary Data Sources, and the recommendations provided from the rest of the projects’ engagement activities on POIESIS D2.5: Cultivating chains of mediation to foster trust in science will be used as an input for the POIESIS Scenario Workshop (mid-May 2025, Brussels) which will co-create with stakeholders, with a focus on policy makers, the final POIESIS policy recommendations for tackling societal mistrust in science and for strengthening the co-creation of R&I contents by society. You can easily download all those documents here! 

Over the last few years, the POIESIS research team ran a series of engagement events addressing researchers, journalists, science communicators, institutional ethics officers, and citizens. Through 7 Public Deliberative Workshops, 119 Expert Interviews and a Survey Experiment involving 2847 participants, POIESIS focused on how different types of scientific communicators translate scientific information into various public domains and to different audiences (translation processes which we describe as “chains of mediation”).

Deliverable D2.5: Cultivating chains of mediation to foster trust in science describes in more detail this process and our main recommendations which could be summarised as follows:

• Research integrity practices tend to be indirectly inferred or embedded in the work that mediators provide to their audiences. At the same time, some mediators, particularly specialist science journalists, are important actors in exposing actual integrity or ethical problems in science and view this as a vital part of their professional role and their contribution to the public good.
• Closer to science, researchers and institutional ethics officers place greater emphasis on the importance of community norms and the formal procedures and processes that foster integrity and ethics in science. The outputs of their work may not always be shared directly with the public. However, they often do provide information and inputs to the work of mediators
• While the public seemingly recognizes the value of good research practices and are more trusting when research integrity and societal integration is secured, such practices should not be mistaken for a silver bullet for mediators or institutional actors trying to handle public (mis)trust of science.
• While greater public engagement can be beneficial, the desirable extent of citizen 16 involvement as well as the suitable topics that citizens can meaningfully contribute to, needs consideration.
• Chains of mediation should base their communication in scientific values, rigour of the scientific process and quality.
• Specific conditions call for specific forms of communication and/or dialogue, and the degree to which mediators can play a role as builders or maintainers of trust in science is clearly different across cases and contexts.

Those recommendations, along with the findings of the secondary data analysis on public trust in science provided on POIESIS D1.5: Integrity, Integration, and Institutions for Trust: Reflections Based on Secondary Data Sources, and the recommendations provided from the rest of the projects’ engagement activities on POIESIS D3.4:  How can institutions promote responsible research to enhance trust in science: An analytical aide memoire towards recommendations for maintaining trust will be used as an input for the POIESIS Scenario Workshop (mid-May 2025, Brussels) which will co-create with stakeholders, with a focus on policy makers, the final POIESIS policy recommendations for tackling societal mistrust in science and for strengthening the co-creation of R&I contents by society. You can easily download all those documents here! 

POIESIS D1.5: Integrity, Integration, and Institutions for Trust: Reflections Based on Secondary Data Sources contains reflections as well as the main findings of the secondary data curation, (re-) analysis, and synthesis that the projects’ WP1 has carried out.

Apart from secondary data on public trust in science (considering also data on research integrity and societal integration in this regard), consisting of  a comprehensive exploration of the field of surveys on trust in science in Europe, and an in-depth analysis of Eurobarometer data as well, this process also includes  a reflection on the concept of trust in science from theoretical, empirical and survey perspectives in two expert workshops with key survey operators across Europe as well as science communicators with experience in crisis communication (in Berlin, June 2023; Lisbon, February 2024; and one more in Paris also forthcoming , June 2025)

Those findings, along with the recommendations provided by the POIESIS engagement activities on POIESIS D2.5: Cultivating chains of mediation to foster trust in science and on POIESIS D3.4:  How can institutions promote responsible research to enhance trust in science: An analytical aide memoire towards recommendations for maintaining trust will be used as an input for the POIESIS Scenario Workshop (mid-May 2025, Brussels) which will co-create with stakeholders, with a focus on policy makers, the final POIESIS policy recommendations for tackling societal mistrust in science and for strengthening the co-creation of R&I contents by society. You can easily download all those documents here!