Our Aim
What is our understanding of Public Engagement?
Public Engagement (PE) activities can actively and continuously involve anyone in our society, regardless of identity or background, particularly those with an interest in or connection to the topic. This aims to enrich the discourse around research topics with lived experience and valuable societal perspectives outside of academia. These contributors can be citizens, experts, NGOs, schools, children, associations, politicians or companies, to name just a few examples. Through PE, researchers, students, professors and representatives of research institutions enter into an equitable exchange with these communities. PE is an English language term that has become established internationally. By focusing on mutual benefit and exchange supporting society-oriented research, PE clearly differs from other forms of science communication. PE describes a field in the German research landscape, the practice of exchange between researchers and the public, and stands for the attitude that research and society benefit from mutual interaction.
What is our understanding of Impact?
Broader or longer-term changes or effects resulting from a project’s activities. These effects and changes can have different impact spheres (e.g. societal, social, environmental, political, health, economic, cultural)*.
*Adapted from: your project and its outcomes, 2007. By Sally Cupitt with Jean Ellis for Charities Evaluation Services.
Our Objectives
Further align MfN’s Public Engagement with academic, societal, and environmental impact goals
Support the design of MfN’s Public Engagement initiatives that are impact-oriented
Explicitly include Public Engagement into the strategies of research institutions and career paths
Contribute to impact optimisation through research, best-practices, culture change, co-creation and multi-stakeholder processes.
IETI Work Packages (WPs)
IETI combines research, impact planning and assessment methodologies, as well as culture change and co-creation processes to optimise the impact of Museum für Naturkunde Berlin’s research and Public Engagement.
IETI’s research and practice are divided into three work packages:
Work package 1. Concepts & Contexts: Focuses on the mapping of stakeholders and public engagement (PE) initiatives, as well as initial perceptions of impact and practice. It also explores relevant concepts and frameworks.
Work package 2. Impact Planning & Assessment: Explores how MfN understands, practices, and evaluates its institutional and social impact. The goal is to develop tools for institutional self-evaluation and to promote reflexivity within institutions.
Work package 3. Culture Change & Co-creation: Examines MfN researchers' motivations, barriers, and needs regarding PE, and explores effective integration of PE, participation, and societal needs into MfN's research, including ways to recognize and incentivize researchers’ involvement in PE.
IETI will generate multiple research and practice outputs, recommendations on how to optimise the impact of the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin, several impact and culture change initiatives, practice reports for Public Engagement practitioners and professionals, and research articles for the academic community.
The project’s work is aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals 14 (Life Below Water) and 15 (Life on Land).