Vivien Petras, Professor of Information Retrieval, Department of Library and Information Science
How are/were you supported by the BUA?
Petras: I was not directly funded by the BUA, but I was able to invite a visiting scholar with the support of the BUA. She did research here and networked with colleagues from bibliometrics, information management and science studies.
How has the BUA supported you in your work?
Petras: The BerlinUP publishing house is currently supporting me with the publication of an open access textbook with great advice and guidance, which is great and a very good result from the BUA. The book is called "The Discipline of Organising" and is a basic introduction to information organisation and information management, combining insights from library and information science, cognitive science, computer science and management.
If the BUA is awarded the contract again: What would you like to see?
Petras: If the BUA is awarded the contract again, I would like to see more cross-university projects like this one.
Jule Specht, Professor of Personality Psychology,
Department of Psychology
How are/were you supported by the BUA?
Specht: As part of the "Open Humboldt Freiräume" programme, I was able to spend a semester working on the topic of science communication. During this time, my teaching load was taken over by a deputy. And my colleague Dr Ronja Demel was granted a research leave semester through a Career Development Award, during which she was able to deepen her research on the role of empathy in socio-political contexts.
How did the BUA support you in your work?
Specht : The BUA has supported me in many ways. For example, it enabled me to establish a new research focus together with an interdisciplinary team of psychologists, sociologists, political scientists and communication scientists on the topic of "social cohesion" and "affective polarisation". My research on solidarity-based behaviour during the coronavirus pandemic was also funded by the BUA.
If the BUA is awarded another grant: What would you like to see?
For the future, I would like to have long-term opportunities to conduct research into pressing future issues. The BUA has identified five "Grand Challenges", one of which is "Social Cohesion". We are experiencing how current crises and conflicts are leading to major upheavals within society, some of which are highly emotionally charged. This affective polarisation jeopardises social cohesion and constructive debates on how to deal with crises. Science can make an important contribution to overcoming this challenge, especially in Berlin as a centre of science. This is where scientists from all disciplines meet a committed civil society that can work together on an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary basis. Of course, it is not possible to exhaustively research the big questions of the future in just a few years and I hope that the BUA will not only succeed in initiating research, but also in promoting it in the long term.
Tobia Lakes, Professor of Applied Geoinformatics
How are you supported by the BUA?
Lakes: I am currently indirectly funded by the BUA as part of the BUA Next Grand Challenge "Responsible Innovation in Times of Transformation" in the inter- and transdisciplinary project TransformMobility. This funding enables me to employ a research assistant for 18 months and I also receive a certain amount for business trips. I received personal support through the leadership programme. The programme with the exchange between colleagues and the accompanying workshops and coaching sessions is great.
How has the BUA supported you in your work?
Lakes: Through the BUA, I was particularly supported in initiating new research ideas and networks in the Berlin area. This has resulted in very interesting and promising cooperation ideas and research approaches. The leadership programme has supported me a lot in my role as a manager at a Berlin university and I have had very positive experiences.
If the BUA is awarded the programme again: What would you like to see?
Lakes: I would definitely like to see the continuation of the initiation of research collaborations and the leadership programme. Building on this, I would like to see further and more long-term research approaches being funded. This would enable the research ideas and collaborations that have been initiated to be pursued further. I would also like to see the effort involved in applying for and managing the comparatively small and short-term funding programmes reduced. In addition, it should be clearly communicated that academic staff are hired via budget funds and that this involves a teaching load. Accordingly, this could already be taken into account in applications and project planning. I could also imagine that there could be further synergy effects between the BUA and the universities. In any case, I would not want to see the expansion of multiple structures in research support.
Claudia Derichs, Professor of Transregional Southeast Asian Studies
at the Department of Asian and African Studies
How are/were you supported by the BUA?
Derichs: The BUA is funding our project "co2libri - Conceptual Collaboration: Living Borderless Research Interaction" via the Berlin Centre for Global Engagement (BCGE). This involves researchers from the FU and HU working together. Including an initial one-year grant, we have received funding for a total of four years to establish and consolidate a global network of researchers. This network is concerned with "Theorising from the South" and the implementation of epistemic decolonisation. The aim is to learn from the Global South and incorporate these perspectives into our own research. In addition to the financial support, the exchange with the BCGE was also very valuable, as it created structures that should be maintained for as long as possible.
How did the BUA support you in your work?
Derichs: Our ideas for organising the network - for example through regular online formats, spring/autumn schools in Germany and abroad, public co2libri Summer Talks and publications - were supported by the BCGE team. At the same time, co2libri members took part in various, mostly interdisciplinary programmes offered by the BCGE and the BUA. The exchange between the FU and the HU has definitely been facilitated and revitalised many times over, and new initiatives have emerged that have resulted in project proposals, among other things. The co2libri work shows that networks of actors from the Global North and the Global South are resilient and robust. They are able to withstand major political events and their offshoots in science, for example when it comes to the criticism of approaches and practices for epistemic decolonisation that has recently become quite prominent.
If the BUA is awarded another contract: What would you like to see?
Derichs: I hope that the inspiring and successful collaboration of the past four years can be continued and put on a stable footing - and that we don't have to permanently enter the hamster wheel of time-limited project funding. Our project has created structures that deserve to be permanently integrated into the Berlin university landscape in the interests of sustainable knowledge production and results. co2libri has achieved a great deal; now it is time to secure these successes for the long term.
The questions were asked by: Ljiljana Nikolic