What is your role for EU4DUAL at FH JOANNEUM?
Johanna Muckenhuber: I represent FH JOANNEUM in work package 5 “Dual Research for Social Impact” and also lead this within the university. Together with Beate, I also lead the “Lighthouse Research Initiative Health and Welfare Transition” in the consortium. Within this initiative, I lead the “Mental Health” working group.
Beate Salchinger: At FH JOANNEUM, I coordinate the Healthy Living area within Work Package 3 “Academic Coordination of Grand Innovation Challenges” and am the main contact person for all colleagues in health studies when it comes to EU4DUAL. I am also a member of the internal EU4DUAL Project Advisory and Communication Board.
You both lead the “Lighthouse Research Initiative Health and Welfare Transition”. What does this initiative involve?
As the name suggests, LRIs are lighthouse initiatives within the EU4UDAL research area. EU4DUAL has established four lighthouse research initiative groups: Engineering for Sustainable and Digital Industry, Business & Management for Green Transition, Interdisciplinarity in Social Sciences and our Health and Welfare Transition group. The focus areas match the three Grand Challenge areas around which EU4DUAL is centred (Future of Work, Green Economy and Healthy Living), and for additional interdisciplinary topics not covered in the Grand Challenges, the fourth LRI group Interdisciplinarity in Social Sciences has been set up. All groups are working on developing project ideas and proposals for the upcoming years.
The LRI groups have representatives from all nine EU4DUAL partner universities. Within the groups, there are sub-groups or “Cluster Working Groups” working on specific topics related to the main topic of the group. In the case of Health and Welfare, there are sub-groups for food/nutrition, ageing and augmented reality, social aspects of health, mental health of dual students and health and green economy.
What current topics are you working on in the project?
The members of the various “Cluster Working Groups” are currently working on preparing project applications and submitting them to national and international funding programmes. As soon as a research project is approved, a project group will be formed to work on this project. Cooperation between the partner universities is going very well. Most meetings take place virtually, but the first major face-to-face meeting took place this April at the annual conference in Malta.
What are the advantages of EU4DUAL for your research work?
EU4DUAL enables us to collaborate internationally in a very diverse group of people from other European countries. Depending on their expertise, the group members look at the research topics from different angles. This results in disccusions that benefit everyone. Thinking and developing new ideas together is a lot of fun. EU4DUAL is also a role model for FH JOANNEUM for thinking beyond one’s own department, for simply thinking bigger. Another added value is the inter-professionalism of the group. Finally, we learn from each other – there are partners in the project who have never submitted an EU project proposal before, while others have long-standing experience in various funding schemes. New collaborations, partnerships and even friendships are being formed.
Find out more about EU4DUAL on their website or on the FH JOANNEUM project site.
