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At the end of May, members of the COALESCE team descended upon the city of Aberdeen for the Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST) 2025 conference. Two years on from our kick off meeting in Rotterdam, the team had the opportunity to present the current status of European Competence Centre for Science Communication to the international science communication community. This was a fantastic opportunity to share our progress, gain insights, and explore how the Competence Centre can support members of the diverse and vibrant global scicomm ecosystem.
The COALESCE presence at the conference was spread across the preconference and main conference (as well as some partners showing off their dance moves at the PCST ceilidh!). COALESCE was the main pre-conference workshop sponsor, supporting in-depth conversations around timely themes and issues. One highlight included our partnership with the PCST Teaching Forum on workshops that explored topics of AI and inclusion in teaching science communication. It was here that our plans for the training services that will be offered by the Competence Centre were introduced to those with expertise in this area.
If you joined PCST, you may have spotted our booth! The booth was inspired by features of the Competence Centre, acting as a hub for conversation and ideation, a clearing house for resources, and a space to ask all those burning questions about COALESCE. We even managed to have a few spotlighted guests visit our booth and share both their insights and current projects, including independent consultant Siddharth Kankaria, Declaration on Research Assessment (DORA) Programme Manager Giovanna Lima, and Board Director of the World Conference of Science Journalists and chief editor of Nature India Subhra Priyadarshini. Thank you to all who came to visit us at the booth, and who made our time at PCST so very valuable and enriching.
The COALESCE team were fortunate to participate in a number of sessions throughout the main conference, ranging from topics around impact and evaluation, trust and misinformation, to training and citizen science. But PCST also gave us the opportunity to learn from and be inspired by others, to see the vast array of impressive work being done on a global scale and take time to reflect on where the Competence Centre sits within the international scicomm community.
Thank you to the PCST and University of Aberdeen teams for having us! We had a truly wonderful time.
– Aoife Taylor, on behalf of the COALESCE team
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