Presenting the winners of the public enagement seed funding call

Nine researchers have been randomly drawn by the organizers of the Public Engagement Seed Fund of the Open Science Programme to win each up to €5,000 for their public engagement projects.

The funding was distributed in two rounds, organized in December 2022 and May 2023. We received a total of 44 inspiring submissions which were then screened for eligibility by an interdisciplinary jury composed of UG and UMCG staff members. Fourteen of these were deemed eligible by the jury and included projects from a wide range of fields - from philosophy, to medical sciences, science & engineering, social and behavioral sciences and humanities. Nine projects were then randomly selected in the two rounds to receive the funding they requested.  

The four winning projects from the First call are:

• Brenda Mathijssen (Faculty for Theology and Religious Studies), Podcast: Dealing with death in the Netherlands

• Marina Roos (Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences), Student, Stadjer and Sociology

• Laura Postma (University Medical Center Groningen), Scientific Research for young people by young people

• Mijntje ten Brummelaar, Mónica Lopez Lopez, Rodrigo Gonzalez Alvarez, Leo Wieldraaijer-Vincent, Kevin van Mierlo and Gabriela Jothar Martinez (Faculty of Behavioural and Social Sciences), Book proposal ‘Working with LGBTQIA+ youth in the child welfare system’

The five winning projects from the Second call are:

• Sven Gins (Faculty of Theology And Religious Studies), Monstrum: The medieval cooperative board game

• Alberto Godioli (Faculty of Arts) and Tjeerd Royaard, Cartoons in Court: A Traveling Exhibition

• Karène Sanchez Summerer (Faculty of Arts), A Dutch Lawrence of Arabia? Netherlands, Arabs, Jews, and the 'Holy Land'

• Leoni Von Ristok, Maaike de Heij and Klaus Hubacek (Faculty of Science and Engineering), Visuality: Visual storytelling in science

• Stefano Bertorini, Niels Faber and Gjalt de Jong (Campus Fryslan), Deep Design in Agriculture

The Public Engagement seed fund provides an opportunity for scientific staff of the UG and UMCG to receive up to €5,000 for ongoing or future public engagement projects. The seed fund aims to reward those staff members of the UG and UMCG that want to engage the public without unnecessary competitiveness, and to distribute available funding in a manner that acknowledges the element of luck in funding awards.

It takes time and effort to engage society in research, which is currently too often perceived as an investment without clear career benefits. Hopefully, the Public Engagement seed fund will provide acknowledgement to those UG and UMCG staff members who aim to engage the public, and will serve as encouragement for the rest.