Coalescing at ESOF2024

COALESCE had a strong presence at the ESOF2024 conference in Katowice, Poland, held two weeks ago. Our highlight was a press conference where we presented our latest policy brief, on excellent science communication for urgent societal challenges – you can read the press release below. We also had a booth crewed by members of the COALESCE team and ran two sessions at the conference (reports below). Huge thanks to everyone who attended our sessions or spoke with the team at the booth.

The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre published a report earlier this month, on “Trustworthy Public Communications”. One of the key recommendations is: “New challenges require new skills, competences and centres of expertise to support public communication professionals.” COALESCE is proud to be working towards this recommendation, as we co-create the European Competence Centre for Science Communication. Our website for the Competence Centre is now live: scicommcentre.eu.

Since our last newsletter, we have released two new episodes of our podcast, SciComm Conversations: on engaging the public on artificial intelligence, with Professor Jennifer Edmond from Trinity College Dublin, and on using AI as science communicators and journalists, with Mohamed Elsonbaty, vice president of the Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST) network.

We also have couple of calls for participation in forthcoming COALESCE workshops. Our first is on 9 July (15:00–17:00 CEST) for those of you who are involved in informal science-communication activities (including artistic/creative work) on the topic of oceans, water or soils. And the second is on 17 July (13:30–15:00 CEST) for those who communicate science via visual approaches.

Our next newsletter will be out in September. But don’t forget that you can follow us on social media to keep up with COALESCE – we post regularly on X (Twitter) and LinkedIn. Have a lovely summer!

– The COALESCE Communications Team