The first reporting period was mainly dedicated to administrative and management activities, and most of all to the recruitment of Early Stage Researchers (ESRs). The 15 fellows come from both EU (7) and non-EU (6) countries, with 13 different nationalities: Kenya, Denmark, Ireland, Greece, Vietnam, Colombia, Italy, USA, Canada, Russia, Sweden, Germany and Spain. Some months after their recruitment ESRs presented their projects during a scientific “speed-dating” session organized at the first network meeting; they prepared a Career Development Plan and a protocol and they started to work on their research projects assisted by their supervisors and mentors. In the second reporting period, they developed their research projects, they attended all the planned training events (organized in Ghent, Liverpool, Amsterdam, Split and Barcelona), they took part in several secondments and presented their results at over 50 international scientific conferences organized in Europe, USA, South Africa, Japan and Australia. For the time being, three fellows have defended their thesis and the other defenses are planned in the next months: all fellows are planning to conclude their PhD by the end of the year.
ESRs were involved in several innovative “Training through action” activities (cooperative and collaborative learning opportunities in which they work in small teams to develop their interpersonal skills, learn how to deal with conflict and reinforce their ability to develop interdisciplinary interactions): 10 journal clubs, internal peer-reviews, a challenge and a common research project on Questionable Research Practices involving all ESRs.
We developed a project website and established a Twitter account, that we used on a daily basis. We set up a YouTube account where we have uploaded several videos, including interviews realized in the framework of the project, webinar sessions and video recordings of our last conference. We have sent out 9 newsletters to a growing network of people interested in our work and we have created and distributed a booklet gathering the main project results.
The second reporting period focused on carrying on research activities in line with the project objectives. As a result, ESR2, ESR6 and ESR8 explored how research is planned, conducted and analysed; ESR10 and ESR11 explored new concepts such as the concept of spin; ESR5 investigated new forms of research involving collective intelligence; ESR3 and ESR13 explored complex processes in research to improve its understanding. Also, fellows developed new methods and tools for research planning (ESR1, ESR4), research synthesis (ESR7, ESR8, ESR12), research reporting and peer-review (ESR9, ESR14, ESR15).
