During the FORTHEM meeting at the University of Opole in November 2024, several academics were invited to share good practices and experiences of international cooperation with Ukrainian scholars participating in the project “Supporting cooperation between the University of Opole and Ukrainian universities within the framework of the FORTHEM Alliance” of the NAWA organization. (Details of the networking event here https://uni.opole.pl/en/aktualnosci/on-research-cooperation-and-science-during-forthem-meeting/)
Among the invited speakers was CORECON director and research leader prof. Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska, who shared her insights from international research collaboration with multiple FORTHEM partners, including Horizon2020 Science with and for Society project FIT FORTHEM and CORECON research project devoted to mapping the media coverage and reception of Russian-Ukrainian conflict, where academics from Poland and Romania, as well as experts from various organizations and independent scholars join to enhance our understandings of war journalism, conflict representation, disinformation in the public sphere and other aspects of resilient reception of news.
The core of the lecture was devoted to European research funding lines and the evaluation criteria when it comes to project impact. The link between outputs (deliverables, results) and outcomes (impacts) was discussed at length and examples of grant application guidelines were analyzed in order to help future applicants to ideate and present their project’s pathways to impact effectively. The CORECON project was given as an example of planning and designing not only quality research but also institutional capacity building, or the enhancement of early stage researcher’s skills, but also societal impacts such as implications for journalism training, information resilience and critical media literacy. CORECON also organizes various dissemination events, shares data openly, promotes its activities and results through a website, blog and social media, and co-creates interventions targeted at young media users.
More about such actions: https://grants.ulbsibiu.ro/corecon/corecon-team-delivered-workshops-for-high-school-students/
Text by Katarzyna Molek-Kozakowska