A pan-European scientists’ community promoting open science in an open world.

On 16th May, the 2nd Homo Scientificus Europaeus meeting took place at the Ateneu Barcelonès. Organised by Gilles Mirambeau (EuroScientist, Scientists Dating Forum and UPMC Sorbonne Universités) and with support of various other entities, amongst which the SciDF.

This meeting’s objective was to “foster the creation of a large pan-European community of citizen-scientists supporting the new social contract between science and society”. Representatives of grassroots associations and organisers of March for Science from across Europe came together to present their local initiatives and the situation of the scientific sector in their country.

Yoran Beldengrün (SciDF and March for Science Barcelona) shared the panel with Claudio Paganini (March for Science Berlin, DE), Christine Heller del Riego (EuroScience and March for Science Copenhagen, DK) and Robin Vigouroux (Marche pour les Sciences Paris, FR). Yoran presented how the SciDF contributes to improving relations between science, politics and the society. This was a demand reiterated at most of the over 600 March for Sciences in April 2017, also the one in Barcelona.

Besides this, it got clear from the panel discussion that every country has its own problems to tackle, be it budget cuts in research for countries like Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece, or scientists fighting the Brexit, like the organisation Scientists for EU do.

This meeting, which ended with an afternoon focused on presentation of local open science projects, gave a first opportunity for engaged citizen-scientists to get to know each other and discuss common future European actions.

Find the video recordings of the entire meeting on YouTube, including Yoran’s talk.

Yoran Beldengrün