JEN_T_01 TIDE: Transferring Innovative Thinking

Objectives / Research Questions

This transfer project focuses on the mutual exchange and on the knowledge transfer between researchers and practitioners. Within the framework of knowledge transfer, we seek to

• communicate in a dialogue-based and universally understandable manner,
• share the results of our investigation and research,
• take part in discussions,
• incorporate ideas originating from society and integrate them into research, and
• engage in debates with broad swaths of society to strengthen democracy as a whole.

To this end, we incorporate two dimensions of knowledge transfer, as set forth in the application: counselling – in the sense of society counselling – as well as exchanges, especially with external actors. For this purpose, formats have been designed that allow researchers to enter into a dialogue with the general public rather than to merely communicate unidirectionally.

This project is divided into five modules:

1. Foyer talks: Twice per year, the Institute for Democracy and Civil Society (IDZ) invites up to three people from areas such as culture and science to engage in an exchange about sociopolitical topics at theatres in Jena and Weimar.
2. Rural discussions: The IDZ seeks to engage with populations living in rural areas of Thuringia by promoting controversial discussions, constructive debates, and the generation of new ideas. These events are oriented towards the realities of the target populations, and they allow discussions to be held about local, regional, and transregional topics regarding society.
3. Roundtable discussions: The IDZ defines topics of current sociopolitical relevance and provides a space for people to discuss these issues in small groups. They invite diverse actors from the parliament, the public administration, the police department, and interest groups, among others. The experts and multipliers for these events are individuals from the areas of research, the media, and civil society. These events aim to make contributions such as supplementing parliamentary processes and identifying sources of potential within society.
4. Developing modern formats: Idea transfer beyond conventional event formats will be developed and tested out. Our aim is to create a toolbox of methods for different transfer formats that will be made available to the RISC sections.
5. Lines of research: The Transfer Committee can be supported in the process of creating approaches for knowledge transfer between research and real-world applications.

Individual events, such as the foyer talks, will be turned into a podcast series and shared on streaming services.

Thematic relation to social cohesion

Matters of social cohesion are playing an ever-more important role within public discourse, and they have the potential to achieve a higher degree of politicization if turned into an object for policy decisions. This project addresses issues regarding social cohesion, as defined and analysed by RISC, by engaging with the broadest target group as possible. By working on the basis of scientifically verifiable facts, these formats are important both in objectivizing existing discourses as well as in supporting the process of democratic consensus-building.