2023
SFS team with SI focus strongly represented at 2023 Eu-SPRI Conference
This year's Eu-SPRI Conference took place in Brighton (and Hove) and was organized by the Science Policy and Research Unit (SPRU) of the University of Sussex, one of the most traditional and renowned institutions in international innovation research. The conference kicked off with an Early Career Researcher Conference, where Katrin Bauer discussed various measurement tools for her current research project on Public Sector Social Innovation with scholars from the field of public sector research.
At the main conference, six SFS researchers presented their current research projects and papers. Topics included Participatory Workshops and Mobility Practices (Kay Cepera & Marlon Philipp), Social Exnovation and Buen Vivir (Dr. Rick Hölsgens & Dr. Karina Maldonado-Mariscal), Social Innovation and Practice Theory (Marthe Zirngiebl), and Public Sector Social Innovation (Katrin Bauer). Former SFS staff member Dmitri Domanski (Business Metropole Ruhr) also reported on his current project from the field on Social Innovation in Transition Super Labs.
The focus of these contributions was directed at the well-attended track "Harnessing Social Innovation for Sustainability", organized by Katrin Ostertag (Fraunhofer ISI), Jakob Edler (Fraunhofer ISI), Jürgen Howaldt (SFS), Rick Hölsgens (SFS), Matthias Weber (Austrian Institute of Technology), Doris Schartinger (Austrian Institute of Technology), Tineke Kleinhout-Vliek (Utrecht University) and Adrian Smith (University of Sussex). Social innovation has become an indispensable part of the Eu-SPRI Forum and was one of the top 5 tracks at this year's conference, although social innovation was also increasingly addressed in other tracks.