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ICAS and MRI invite to an conference on mountain research in Bern

Swiss contributions to international mountain research: Benefits for policy and government. A conference organised by MRI and ICAS. Latest news: a short note and presentations are now online!

“Sharing knowledge means knowing more”, “ intensify collaborations between private sector, authorities and research”, “what are the roles of knowledge brokers?” Such were just a few points touched the by various speakers at the joint ICAS/MRI conference in Bern on Friday 25 June 2010.

Participants were numerous, from state secretariats and offices, NGO’s, University institutes and local authorities. The conference raised the topics of

a) how Switzerland is positioned with regard to international mountain research projects, and

b) how policy and authorities can benefit from the research results.

Bruno Moor from the State Secretariat for Education and Research (SER) affirmed a very high and successful Swiss participation in European research projects, the mountain projects being located in the space, environment, and food and agriculture programs. According to Bruno Moor, Switzerland benefits not only monetarily, but more significantly even at the level of international collaboration and knowledge transfer.

Guest speakers and participants subsequently discussed mostly about knowledge transfer and knowledge brokers who translate research results for practitioners. Everybody was concerned about the closing of the apparent gap between scientific project results and their consequences for a broader public.

Common agreements of the conference included:

interdisciplinary research is absolutely necessary
there is a huge need for social science (e.g. behavioral science, management of changes, how to transform knowledge into action etc.)
it is now time for the capitalization of what has been found. Implementation!
“call for needs” instead of “call for papers”. Start with the challenges of a region.
personal contacts and relationships make the difference in a project
stakeholders, authorities, politicians and local population must be included in a project team
in a project it is necessary to include a budget for knowledge transfer and personnel
transfer of knowledge should be part of the curriculum at Universitites.
Using shared knowledge is fundamental

Fora follow-up conference the participants suggested to invite alsorepresentatives from economy as well as politicians to ensure a knowledgetransfer of project research results to those areas.

Presentations:

Please find the presentations of all the guest speakers:

ICAS_MRI_conference: Presentation Manuel Flury 1.55 Mb