Do you work in communications at a scientific academy?
Does your job require you to organise events, liaise with press, update websites and manage social media?
Do you struggle with the resources and skills you would need to support your Academy in achieving its mission?
You are not alone!
As professionals working on communications at scientific academies across Europe, we face challenges in our work. How do we best engage with our audiences? How can AI tools support us? How do we ensure the platforms we work with represent our values?
SAPEA brings together expertise from over 120 academies, young academies and learned societies in more than 40 countries across Europe. These organisations vary greatly in their scale and context, each facing their own particular challenges, but there are also many common challenges that each unit faces. By sharing our experiences, we can inspire and learn from each other, network together and integrate good practices into our daily work.
In 2023, 40 of us met in Warsaw for a workshop to explore some of these topics and the value of working together on these topics at European level was very clear. The group attended masterclasses on social media, podcasts and video. We explored challenges together around defining audiences including maximising numbers, managing internal conflict and better involving non-communications colleagues in communications strategies. Finally, we brainstormed ideas on how to keep in touch and build the community of professionals working in communications for European academies. The group agreed that there was a definite appetite for continuing to build the community with in-person meet-ups. Participants felt the group has great potential to make key decisions about how research is communicated in Europe and look forward to harnessing this potential.
We would like to invite you to join us for an initial meeting online where we will discuss some of the challenges we face and skills we would like to further develop, to help shape the following in-person meeting. Then in May we will come together in person for a training workshop in Vienna, where we will work together to develop the relevant skills and capacities, exploring experiences and good practices from across Europe and building the basis for a stronger European community of communications professionals across scientific academies.
This initiative is aimed at anyone working on communications for a scientific academy, young academy or learned society from across Europe. Meetings and workshops will be held in English.
Academy representatives are welcome to attend the initial online meeting even if they might not be able to make it to the follow-up in Vienna.
