Living together: Missions for Shaping the Future – A Joint Statement on Transdisciplinary ‘Missions’ for FP9


Posted: 8 December, 2017

How should research and innovation funding in Europe look like in the next framework programme? What changes are needed, which topics need to be tackled? What would be the contributions of the humanities and social sciences?

HERA and ALLEA (All European Academies) together with ELI (European Law Institute), ESA (European Sociological Association), EuroScience, Global Young Academy, Net4Society (International network of National Contact Points (NCPs) for the Societal Challenge 6 in Horizon 2020), NORFACE (New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Cooperation in Europe), Young Academy of Europe suggest an agenda for European Research and Innovation as seen from the humanities and social sciences: Europe in the 2020s and the challenges ahead, how to frame  ‘missions’, which are the conditions research and innovation need and what is needed to effect social and cultural transformation. In answer to the High Level Group’s suggestion of a “mission-oriented, impact-focused approach to address global challenges”, HERA proposes to further discuss “missions” from a humanities and social sciences viewpoint.

We suggest the following

  • missions are to be transformative
  • innovation is more than technology
  • ambitious aims do not need narrowly pre-defined end-products
  • more bottom-up approaches with room for smaller-scale projects is needed
  • integration of all countries and regions, within and outside of Europe is crucial

To target social and cultural transformations, we put forward four examples of potential missions calling for inter- and transdisciplinary research and innovation which are of relevance for the citizen and research and innovation alike

  • Living Together: Building Sustainable, Open and Democratic Societies for the Future
  • Catching up with Innovation: Preparing for Social Consequences and Embracing Opportunities
  • Growing up and Ageing in Europe: A Good Life and a Dignified Death
  • Truth, Trust and Expertise: Establishing and Securing Trust as a Basis for Sustainable and Legitimate Governance.

 

For further information, please contact Christa Engel at [email protected]

Download publication

More: Humanities, Policy, Social Sciences

Our use of cookies

We use necessary cookies to make our site work. We'd also like to set optional analytics cookies to help us improve it. We won't set these optional cookies unless you enable them. Using this tool will set a cookie on your device to remember your preferences.

For more detailed information about the cookies we use, see our Cookies page

Necessary cookies

Necessary cookies enable core functionality such as security, network management, and accessibility. You may disable these by changing your browser settings, but this may affect how the website functions.

Analytics cookies

We'd like to set Google Analytics cookies to help us to improve our website by collecting and reporting information on how you use it. The cookies collect information in a way that does not directly identify anyone.