Newsletter
Between the 14th and 16th of June, the Council for Doctoral Education organised the 2023 EUA CDE Annual meeting that took place in Lathi, Finland. This year’s topic was “Engaged research - the role of communication in doctoral education,” and the MCAA, represented by Ruben Riosa, former chair of the Communication Working Group, was invited to be part of the discussion.
About the meeting
The 2023 EUA CDE Annual Meeting organised by Council for Doctoral Education in Lathi, Finland focussed on a very important topic for Early Stage Researcher: “Engaged research - the role of communication in doctoral education.”
During the annual meeting, many institution and doctoral school representatives gathered together to discuss “the different dimensions of communication in doctoral education in order to develop comprehensive approaches to include communication in doctoral education strategy and practices.” The MCAA’s main objective was to report what are our experiences when it comes to communication in doctoral education and try to bring our expertise in trying to fill up the gaps that we think exist nowadays. One of the key aspects we also wanted to highlight is our involvement in the European Citizen Science (ECS) project and the importance of bringing Science communication and increasing the involvement of society into the research world.
Ruben Riosa,
a personal account
Ruben is an Associate Medical Communications Manager for Excerpta Medica, a Medical communications company with the tasks of providing scientific and strategic support and guidance to several medical communications projects for a variety of clients, mostly in the pharma industry. Ruben is currently the Communication Manager of the MCAA, being responsible for a team managing social media dissemination, creation of events, training and plenty of other activities.
The EUA CDE meeting took place over three days and covered a huge variety of topics of communication, focussing specifically on the importance of science communication as an integral part of the doctoral candidate career as well as a key soft skill to be developed by Early Stage Researcher.
More SciComm training is needed at the Doctoral level
I’ve got the honour to participate in the first plenary Session, “Doctoral education as communication hubs,” together with:
• Gian-Andri Casutt, President, European Association of Communication Professionals in Higher Education (EUPRIO); Head of Communications and Public Affairs, ETH Board, Switzerland
• Romain Ledroit, Journalist, France
• Cláudia Cavadas, Professor, former Vice-Rector for Research, University of Coimbra; Member of the Scientific Council, Portuguese Science Foundation, Portugal
And moderated by Peter Hanenberg, EUA-CDE Steering Committee Member; Vice-Rector for Research and Innovation, Catholic University of Portugal, Portugal.
The session focussed on the importance of communication competencies, which are not only essential for researchers in different stages of their careers but also for everyone working within universities.
During the session we discussed the importance of good communication, and how much this is relevant not only for a good scientific presentation, but especially to foster successful exchanges between supervisors, doctoral candidates and institutions.
The session discussed the importance of sharing results to the wider audience and giving back something to the society. As it has been underlined by Gian Andri, “We [as scientists] are part of the society and our funds are normally paid by the taxes, so, we need to give back to the society.” A concept that was very well received by the other panelists, especially by Claudia, who also shared the importance of “teaching and reaching out to the younger generation and making them aware of what is going on,” which was also expanded to the concept of citizen science, particularly important in the MCAA involvement within the ECS project.
Another key topic was doctoral training. All the panellists agreed that there is not enough communication training out there for Early Stage Researchers. This aspect will need to be ameliorated, and there should be more professionalism when talking about Science Communication. Gian Andri underlined that “Science communication is becoming more and more professional, and it is important for researchers to facilitate the discussion and spread their research efficiently.”
Moreover, the role of the journalists is becoming more and more important. According to Romain, “journalists can play an important role in supporting Early Stage Researchers in developing their skills on Media training.” He stressed the concept of working together, even though sometimes journalists are still seen negatively, especially when it comes with the spreading of fake news. Romain in fact, concluded his pitch by mentioning that “journalists and scientists need to work together on projects, such as open source intelligence, as these collaborations could help the scientists understanding the best way of communicating their data and at the same time journalists would be able to have a specialist proofreading their pieces before being published, reducing the publication of fake news.”
Take home messages
What could we do to improve the training on Science Communication at the doctoral level?
Many ideas were discussed, but Gian Andri underlined the importance of developing a common platform in which there could be a selection of training free of charge which could be always available and supporting the career of Early Stage Researcher.
Finally, throughout the conference, other key topics discussed covered the world of scholarly publishing, the role of social media and the importance of AI and what to expect in the upcoming years.
I would like to briefly conclude this article by thanking the MCAA for having given me the opportunity to represent the Association to such event, and I am sure that we will keep offering training, webinars, and workshop and SciComm to our members, but not only, and I’m sure that the Association will always be in the front row when it comes to finding new solutions and creating new materials to support Early Stage Researchers.
Ruben Riosa
MCAA Communications Manager
ruben.riosa@mariecuriealumni.eu
Twitter: @Ruben_Riosa