Data School Call for Workshop Ideas: Making a Difference. Societal Impact through Collaborative Research

The transdisciplinary conference Making a Difference. Societal Impact through Collaborative Research (7-8 April 2025, organised by Data School) aims to connect practitioners from the public sector and media industries with researchers working on societal challenges linked to digital technologies. By facilitating dialogue and exchange, the conference provides a forum for exploring new ways of gaining insights into practice and generating practical recommendations for practice through collaborative research. The conference consists of a series of keynote talks, panels, and engaging workshops. 

With this call, Data School seeks workshop initiatives that focus on the chances and challenges posed by digital technologies for professional practice, with emphasis on the value of collaborative research as a means of making progress. We encourage proposals that seek interaction, promote critical discussions, and involve hands-on exercises. The goal of each workshop would be to utilise the diverse perspectives and know-how from the hosts to make concrete progress on a specific issue or theme, for example by identifying knowledge gaps, crafting research plans, drafting policy outlines, creating awareness programs or educational content, or prototyping novel (technical or non-technical) instruments.  

Data School invites submissions for workshops that address but are not limited to the following topics: 

• Methods for establishing and maintaining meaningful connections to stakeholders 
• Methods for developing co-created research plans with stakeholders 
• Practical approaches for constructively and effectively setting up boundary conditions for collaboration (distributing funding, shared project management infrastructure, standardised contracts, personnel exchanges, HR, etc.) 
• Measuring impact: indicators and metrics for societal impact of (academic) research 
• Novel learning formats for educating professionals or community-engaged learning 
• Academic integrity: balancing pressure and expectation from external stakeholders and academic peers 
• Failure sounds familiar: making the best of setbacks and disappointment 
• How to combine transdisciplinary methods and disciplinary specialisation 
• Researching in public: How to do research amidst volatile and dynamic public conversations and polarised framing of research results? 
• Career opportunities in transdisciplinary and societally engaged research 
• Team science: how to build and run transdisciplinary research teams across different faculties and with external stakeholders 
• Rules of engagement: which policies, guidelines or norms should govern the academic engagement with societal partners? 
• Fight for your right to engage in research activities: legal challenges and how to tackle them 
• Making change: mapping the needed skills, infrastructures, capacities and competences of research support and university administration 

Workshop format

Proposed workshops may include a limited number of speakers who provide brief statements in the form of lightning talks, provocations, informative briefings, etc., and then guide participants toward a collaborative effort to address a topic and develop concrete output. In addition to a workshop host, who serves as a moderator, and the speakers, the submission should make clear who the target audience is and what the expected output of the workshop will be. Data School will ensure that documentation of discussions, along with a summary of the jointly developed output are produced during the workshop. 

Duration of a workshop is maximum 120 minutes.

Number of participants per workshop might range between 20-25. 

Fee: 1500 EUR for non-academic organisations (excl. VAT, incl. access for speakers and presenters). Academic organisations accepted for a workshop proposal pay 1000 EUR (excl. VAT, incl access for speakers and presenters).

Publication: We intend to produce a white paper consisting of the outcomes of each workshop, summarising the output but also listing the next steps and future challenges around the workshop’s topic.

Submitting a workshop proposal:  
Please write an abstract (ca 600 words) describing the topic you want to address, outlining relevant perspectives and naming speakers you will include in the workshop. Provide an overview of how your workshop will be organised, how practitioners are involved, and how you intend to interact with the workshop participants. Briefly outline the statements of the workshop speakers by including a short bio of each.

Please send your proposal to d.nguyen1@uu.nl with subject ‘Making a Difference Conference’ no later than 15 December 2024. You will receive a letter of notification by 10 January 2025.