TORCH D10.4 - Annual Open Forum 1 Report

The TORCH Project enhances CHARM-EU's academic and research networks, as it builds up the R&I dimension of CHARM-EU, promoting a challenge-driven transformative agenda with a transdisciplinary and intercultural vision laying its foundation in three Cross Cutting Principles of RRI: Interdisciplinarity, Gendered Innovation, Ethics and Integrity; and four Transformational Modules: Common R&I Agenda, Cooperation with Non-Academic Actors, Open Science Practices, Citizen Science and Public Engagement.

The first TORCH Annual Forum was a dissemination activity designed to discuss progress and results of the TORCH project and beyond. It included relevant aspects such as open science, public engagement, and Cross-cutting principles to address a transformative R&I Agenda, which were shared with other European Universities. As such, all the Alliances were invited to participate, as the event was devised as the shared activity all FOREU1 Alliances included in their proposals.

The Forum was launched under the title Sustainability in a (post?) pandemic world: asking the right questions on the role of Universities in R&I today. It was held online on March 2, 2022 and virtually hosted by Eötvös Loránd University Budapest (ELTE). During the event, different relevant topics were covered such as:

• Current challenges in the research assessment reform and how the European Union is approaching it and what can we learn from the work done by the European University alliances.
• Share of best practices and discussion on how European University alliances can impact a sustainable future through a common R&I Agenda and the role that such a common agenda may play in achieving the European Green Deal and more broadly contributing to the implementation of the SDGs.
• Discussion on how universities and alliances can better work with enterprises and citizens.
• The importance of cross-cutting principles such as ethics, integrity, interdisciplinary, and gendered innovation in responsible research, as well as the challenges in developing a common implementation approaches by the European University alliances.

The event was addressed to university leadership, European University alliances, and different actors engaged in R&I and university-industry-citizen collaboration. It was also relevant for policymakers, as the European Commission’s perspective was included. More than 100 participants attended the different sessions.

Representatives of different institutions’ leadership (CHARM-EU Alliance: UB and ELTE; FORTHEM Alliance: JGU Mainz) opened the event in the inaugural ceremony.

The first plenary session served to frame the topic of the forum: The R&I framework and the (post?) pandemic scenarios. Some current trends/strategic thinking on this topic (state of play and looking forward) were discussed. As well as what we are doing to advance this agenda and the role of the European Universities initiative and their SwafS projects.

The panel session ‘European Universities: Towards a Reform of the Research Assessment System’ focused on the reform of the research assessment system for research, researchers and institutions to improve their quality, performance and impact. This session discussed the rationale, the proposed approach and principles and work to date, analyzing the challenges and benefits to reforming such a multi-actor system to support a diverse range of outputs, activities and career directions. The panel also looked at the role that the European Universities initiative can play in driving such reform and considered whether there are benefits for teaching and other activities outside of research.

The TORCH Clusters (Crosscutting conversations across R&I topics and sustainability) sought to combine R&I impact/actions and sustainable factors. In order to enhance policy coherence by promoting systemic approaches across the same challenges (SDGs/European Green Deal) while presenting main progresses on the TORCH project and other Alliances’ SwafS projects. It was divided into four parallel thematic clusters (linked to different transformational modules):

• Cluster 1: R&I Common Science Agenda and European Universities. This session went over the methodology and sharing preliminary results, learning and experiences from EU alliances in its work on identifying research strongholds and using bottom-up protocols to compare institutional priorities and good practices.
• Cluster 2: Business & Society and Academic Cooperation. The objective of the session was to share best cases from universities on collaboration between business and university or on spin-off creation.
• Cluster 3: Public Engagement. During this session, some good practices and (dis)incentives for public engagement and transdisciplinary science at the individual, the university, the systemic, and the stakeholders’ levels were discussed.
• Cluster 4: Cross-Cutting Principles to Address a Transformative R&I Agenda. Developing a common European research framework in different countries and cultures and across a number of different disciplines requires addressing the challenges of ensuring ethically fully supported interdisciplinary research while incorporating cross-cutting principles analysis into all areas of R&I processes, including career choices and opportunities as well as research project development and management. Having established our research strengths, we asked, how can we make our research even better?

The final panel session on Open Science had three alliances, CIVIS, AURORA and CHARM-EU, to introduce the Open Science practices and plans of their current SwafS projects.