Young Researchers as Knowledge Brokers -project 2019-2020

During 2019-2020, Young Academy Finland runs “Young Researchers as Knowledge Brokers” -project. Project is funded by Tiina and Antti Herlin Foundation.

Young Academy Finland’s “Young Researchers as Knowledge Brokers” -project aims at developing new approaches for organizing the coordination of knowledge exchange on the science-policy interface. First, we will gather information on the science advice and information exchange mechanisms that other European young academies use. This work is done through a survey and interviews during Summer-Autumn 2019. In the next phase of the project, we will organize several working groups for European young researchers, boundary organizations and decision makers. The workshops are organized in order to a) elaborate together the information on best practices gathered from European young academies and b) develop these practices further so that a new kind of, fresh and inclusive approaches could be invented. In the end, we will 1) provide new approaches for institutionalizing the information exchange between young researchers and decision makers, 2) write a scientific article on the findings basing on the surveys, interviews and workshops, and 3) enable stronger presence of European young academies on the EU’s science-policy interface.

Our main aim is to make the voice of young researchers stronger and more visible among the different science advice mechanisms and possibilities. With the help of workshops we also hope to build the capacity of young researchers to act more actively on science-policy interfaces. Our most ambitious goal is to make the models and mechanisms of the co-production of knowledge and true dialogue more known so that in the near future we could make more efficiently research-informed and -based decisions – and hopefully at the same time decisions that would be fear and sustainable both for nature and humans.

We hope to bring more voices, more cooperation, multidisciplinarity, inclusivity and dialogue to the science-policy interface.