IASS Tuesday Talk, August 24, 2021
Diana Süsser and Vera Köpsel / Stakeholder engagement vs. social distancing: How do the Corona restrictions affect participatory research in EU energy and marine research projects?
Stakeholder engagement has become an important part of many research projects. However, the COVID-19 crisis has revealed its vulnerability to the availability and readiness of stakeholders to interact with researchers. Based on our own challenges of doing stakeholder-based research in COVID-times, we empirically investigated how the crisis affects the stakeholder engagement of ongoing energy and marine science projects. We explored (i) what problems Covid-19 caused for the workflow and outcomes of current research projects, (ii) how scientists responsible for stakeholder engagement coped with the situation, and (iii) how they evaluated alternative stakeholder activities already implemented. In order to do so, we carried out an online survey among running EU energy research and marine science projects with stakeholder engagement components, in June-August 2020. We received responses from overall 108 running Horizon 2020 and other third party projects funded by other sources. In this talk, we will present the key results of our survey, addressing similarities and differences between energy research and marine science. We will also discuss the implications for future physical and digital engagement of stakeholders in research projects.
This presentation (text and figures) is licensed under the Attribution 4.0 International (CC -BY-4.0.), except the pictures on page 2 from iStock/ Lorado and on page 3, which is from the FAO website.
Biosketch:
Dr. Diana Süsser is a postdoctoral researcher in the Energy Transition Dynamics group at IASS. Her research focuses on socio-political-technological transitions, energy policy-model interactions and innovations for a sustainable energy transition. In the EU project “Sustainable Energy Transition Laboratory”, Diana deals with requirements on and the design of future energy system models, with a focus on the integration of social aspects. Before joining IASS, Diana was a fellow at the Israel Public Policy Institute, where she did research on effective policy design to support innovations in green technologies. Previously, she worked for the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) within the climate innovation project „Towards an less than 2° economy” and was an associated researcher in the Integrative Geography at the University of Hamburg. Diana studied environmental sciences at the University of Oldenburg and Kingston University London, and holds a M.Sc. in climate science from the University of Hamburg. Diana completed her doctorate at the University of Hamburg on social and geographic aspects of a local energy transition, while working as researcher in the project Regional Climate Change (REKLIM) at the Helmholtz-Zentrum in Geesthacht.
Dr. Vera Köpsel is holding a PhD in Human Geography with a research focus on human-environment interaction, climate change adaptation, and stakeholder dialogue. She conducted her PhD research with the CliSAP Research Cluster (Climate System Analyses and Prediction) at University of Hamburg, Germany. She is currently working in the PANDORA and FutureMARES research projects at University of Hamburg, Institute of Marine Ecosystem and Fisheries Sciences. Within these projects, she is responsible for Stakeholder Engagement, Outreach & Communication. PANDORA seek to increase the long-term predictability of fish stock across European waters to be able to fish more sustainably according to MSY levels while FutureMARES focuses on marine nature-based solutions.
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