Our last newsletter was way back in July, but while we may have been quiet on the newsletter front, the COALESCE team has been busy with numerous project-related tasks over the last few months.

As a consortium with members all across Europe, most of our work on the COALESCE project takes place over video calls. Which is why we particularly treasure opportunities to meet in person to share ideas and experiences that will shape the European Competence Centre for Science Communication.

In September, we met in Madrid, for both a project meeting and a Mutual Learning Exercise, and this issue of our newsletter has some updates from our time in the Spanish capital.

We also have the latest episode of our podcast for you to listen to, further down, and we expect to release the remaining episodes before the year-end holidays.

The newsletter will return to your inboxes early in 2026, and we hope that you have a lovely Christmas break and a lovely start to the new year.

– The COALESCE communications team

The COALESCE Hubs were invited to consider how misinformation impacts their work as part of a mutual learning and exploitation (MLE) meeting organised in Madrid.

Misinformation is a central theme within the COALESCE project given its prevalence and impact and the meeting with Hubs provided an opportunity to consider the environment of misinformation they work in - and explore approaches to address it.

The session that took place at Círculo de Bellas Artes in central Madrid was organised and hosted by Paola Rodari from SISSA Medialab and Andy Ridgway from the University of the West of England.

The discussions, supported by prompt cards created by the Formicablu team, highlighted that some science-related topics are a source of misinformation in several countries across Europe. For example, the Hubs identified that food supplements and ‘super foods’ are the subject of misinformation in many countries, including the Netherlands, Italy, Bulgaria, France and Lithuania. Whereas it was only the representatives of the Spanish and Estonian Hubs who described renewable energy as the subject of misinformation in their countries.

There are currently 23 COALESCE Hubs involved in the project, representing different countries and regions in Europe. They play an important role in COALESCE, shaping and translating resources being created in the European Competence Centre for Science Communication. The Hubs are a mixture of science centres, universities, non-profit organisations and businesses involved in science communication.

The Hub representatives who attended the MLE highlighted how misinformation mainly impacts their activities by increasing the need for fact checking as well as necessitating training for staff members in how to deal with it. Innovations in the education system that would allow young people to navigate the information they read online was seen as an important way to address misinformation.

It is planned that the Competence Centre will curate resources that will support science communicators in their efforts to address misinformation. It will also provide training related to misinformation for those communicating science.

As part of our work on developing training for the science communication community, we have begun to identify science communication competences needed in different roles. Our initial work has focused on exploring the competences needed by science communication officers (e.g. those working in research institutions and universities), researchers and those working in science centres and museums.

Drawing on other European frameworks, we are developing a model that presents competences across a spectrum: foundational, intermediate, advanced and expert. We then plan to use this to help us organise the training we offer through the Training Centre which will form part of the Competence Centre for Science Communication.

During our recent project meeting in Madrid (22-23 September 2025), we invited the COALESCE partners and European Competence Centre Hubs to explore the work we have done so far to identify competences and critique and deepen it. This led to several key insights.

Firstly, it is clear that the group ‘science centres and museums’ is too narrowly defined and we are now looking for a new title that welcomes those working in a range of similar settings, including zoos, botanical gardens and galleries.

Secondly, we realised that the competence frameworks we were developing had become rather all-encompassing and did not clearly articulate those skills which are specific to science communication as opposed to more general skills required in the role. To this end, we plan to re-examine the frameworks to understand how we can better articulate the science communication component.

Thirdly, from the discussions we are now considering how we might signpost career pathways within the competence frameworks so that we can better highlight clusters of skills that may help build a career, for example specialists in digital media communication or exhibition development.

As our work continues in developing the competence frameworks, we will have additional opportunities to contribute to their formulation, for example through surveys. Please do consider contributing your ideas in due course.

What national initiatives and governance structures have helped to successfully strengthen science communication in European countries — and what lessons could be scaled up across borders? How do policies need to evolve at a national and European level to encourage and enable more effective, inclusive, and sustainable science communication?

These questions guided discussions among national representatives from nine countries across Europe during a Mutual Learning Exercise (MLE) in Science Communication in Research & Innovation (R&I), held in Madrid as part of the COALESCE project. Inspired by the European Commission’s Policy Support Facility – Mutual Learning Exercises (PSF-MLEs), this initiative brought together representatives of government departments and national funding bodies along with science communication research-practice professionals from the COALESCE Hubs network to exchange experiences and co-create actionable policy recommendations.

The day started with a welcome address from Izaskun Lacunza, Director of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology (FECYT), and Joana Magalhães, MLE Chair,  followed by a round of introductions amongst participants. Angela Monasor from FECYT, also a partner in COALESCE, led the first session by presenting results from a survey conducted with participating countries to obtain a panoramic view of science communication within national governance frameworks.

Case studies of success stories from Germany, Ireland, Portugal, Estonia, Sweden, France, Spain and the UK were then presented to provide insights into initiatives that have supported science communication and explore what can be scaled from national level to European-wide. These covered areas such as capacity building, advisory infrastructure and policy support. The survey results revealed a significant gap across countries regarding policies in the integration of ethical principles in science communication. Addressing this, invited speaker Fabien Medvecky, Associate Director of Research at the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science (CPAS), delivered a thought-provoking presentation on why ethics should be considered an essential dimension of science communication policy and practice.

During the afternoon, the second session was led by Joana Magalhães from Science for Change (SFC), with a participatory exercise where researchers, practitioners and policymakers reflected on best practices and challenges in science communication policies and governance, working together to define a long-term vision for embedding science communication more deeply into R&I systems across Europe.

This meeting was the first thematic session, following a kick-off meeting of the MLE. A summary of the discussions held in Madrid will be shared with participants as input for the next topic meeting. Insights from the full MLE process will be captured in a policy report, including recommendations for European Research Area member states, aligned with the ERA Policy Agenda 2025-2027, to help embed  science communication effectively within R&I national policies.

The attendees included: Annely Allik, Chair of Communication at Science Europe and Head of the Science Communication Department at the Estonian Research Council; Tony Whitney, Head of Public Engagement with Research in the Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy in the UK; Rachel Iredale, Head of Public Engagement with Research at Research Ireland; Harald Franzen, Policy Officer for Science Communication at the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space; Barbara Olfe-Krautlein, Science Communication Competence Centre, DLR Projekttrager, Germany; Inês Navalhas, Scientific Officer at Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) Anna Maria Fleetwood, Senior Advisor External Relations at the Swedish Research Council,  Izaskun Lacunza, Director of the Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities, and Luisa Klappauf, as an external observer from the INSPIRING ERA project.

The next MLE session will take place online in January, in which participants will unpack topics of citizen engagement, social perception and trust in science.

SciComm Conversations: Engaging young people with green jobs. Guest: Dr Laura Fogg-Rogers

SciComm Conversations is COALESCE’s official podcast. In our second season of SciComm Conversations, we speak with science-communication researchers about their work. In our first episode, we hear from Dr Laura Fogg-Rogers from the University of the West of England, in the UK. Laura talks about the Curiosity Connections Green Futures project and providing young people with role models in green jobs.

You can also listen to the episode, with a full transcript, on our website.

Strengthening Public Trust in Science

“Science Europe and the French National Research Agency (ANR) are organising this conference to discuss how research organisations, including both those which fund and which perform research, can respond to growing concerns about and reinforce confidence in the research process and its outcomes.”

• Date(s) 📅: 11 December 2025
• Location 📍: Paris, France
• Language(s) 🗣: English, French

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ECSA 2026

“The ECSA 2026 conference is framed around the notion of Citizen Science bridging Centre and Periphery. This theme explores the diversity of contexts in which citizen science unfolds — from urban metropolitan hubs to remote northern and southern spaces — and emphasizes its role as a link between centre and periphery.”

• Date(s) 📅: 3-6 March 2026
• Location 📍: Oulu, Finland
• Language(s) 🗣: English
• Registration 🧾: Early bird registration open (Early bird €350)

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Navigating Science Communication in a Shifting Landscape 

“The sixth international Public Awareness and Engagement with Research Infrastructures conference, PAERI'26. The event will be hosted by European XFEL in the Hamburg region, Germany. The theme of the conference is Navigating Science Communication in a Shifting Landscape.”

• Date(s) 📅: 18-20 March 2026
• Location 📍: Hamburg, Germany
• Language(s) 🗣: English
• Registration 🧾: Early bird registration open (Early bird €390)

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X International Congress AE-IC 

The conference theme is "Communicating in uncertainty" and will focus on the major changes in the field of Communication from the point of view of academic research, knowledge transfer and the social commitment of researchers.

• Date(s) 📅: 19–22 May 2026
• Location 📍: Pontevedra, Spain
• Language(s) 🗣: Spanish

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EUSEA Conference 2026 'In Other Words and Other Worlds Confronting Assumptions for Better Engagement' – call for proposals

“We encourage contributions from a wide range of disciplines and perspectives. Proposals should address the conference theme by exploring various facets of public engagement, such as cultural, socioeconomic, and disciplinary intersections. Share your insights, research findings, and best practices in science communication, citizen science, participatory research, and other engagement initiatives.”

• Date(s) 📅: 20–21 May 2026
• Location 📍: Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
• Language(s) 🗣: English
• Registration 🧾: Early bird opens February 2026 (EUSEA members € 350, Non-members € 500, Students reduced fee €165)

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Ecsite 2026

The Ecsite Conference is a friendly and approachable Conference ideal for anyone working in or supporting the field of science engagement whether from Science centres or Museums, Natural History Museums, Science Festivals, Universities or more.

• Date(s) 📅: 2 - 4 June 2026
• Location 📍: Gothenburg, Sweden
• Language(s) 🗣: English

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