The DCitizens project recently concluded a 3-day lab retreat in Genova, Italy from November 26 to 28, 2024. This lab retreat corresponded to the DCitizens yearly consortium meeting, and it was co-located with the Early Stage Researcher training, and research management training. The retreat was hosted by IIT at Center for Human Technologies (CHT).
Consortium Project Meeting
The meeting started with an opening presentation from Hugo Nicolau with an introduction of the DCitizens project to all participants and a progress report. The second session of the consortium meeting was dedicated to discuss ongoing challenges & opportunities within the project, which mostly focused publication plans, grant writing, and next year’s deliverables. The third session focused on the joint research project and discussion of the current commissioning model. The partners discussed the best format for the civic events, how to scale the model to other universities, and how secure resources for community-led projects beyond the lifetime of DCitizens.
Research Management Training
In the first day of the retreat, the research management staff attended a hands-on session on “How to plan exploitation of research” led by Claudia Schiaffino and Edoardo Pini from IIT’s Project Management Office. For the remaning of the retreat, management staff attended the ESR training.
Early Stage Researcher Training
The main goal of the training sessions was to provide ESRs hands-on experience with frameworks and tools to plan and assess impact of research projects. Lucy Moorcraft ran a 3-hour hands-on workshop on research impact. Both ESRs and the DCitizens Work Package Leaders (WPLs) engaged in a theory of change activity. WPLs focused on planning DCitizen’s impact beyond its lifetime. The first day ended with a session on qualitative research from David Randall, exploring how to conduct this type of research, major challenges, data analysis frameworks, and ethics. In the evening, we ran a poster and demo session at the Museo Diocesiano where ESRs showcased their work to peers and Faculty.
The second day started with a presentation from an NGO partner in Italy: Mercedes Giovinazzo and Cristina Da Milano on the “Role of Societal Readiness Level in Technology-based Projects”. The presentation was followed by a hands-on session on using a tool to deploy socially impactful projects. After lunch, Irene Lozano and Fran Gracia from Casa Árabe shared their experiences related to community participation through intercultural dialogue, innovation, and co-creation processes. The last session of the day was a showcase from Research Engineers, João Nogueira and Dalya Al-Shahrabi, of participatory platforms for civic innovation. The day ended with a visit to some of IIT’s research units.
The last day of the exchange was dedicated to get everyone together and sharing experiences from the ESR training, management training, and internal project meeting. Kyle Montague moderated a discussion of major learning outcomes and insights. Moreover, we commissioned future ESR training sessions for 2025, particularly regarding the invited seminar series, summer school, and the final project meeting in Newcastle.
