The webinar was a joint endeavour of the ESFRI Strategy Working Group on Social Sciences and Humanities, together with SSHOC, the Horizon Europe Office in Ukraine, and the National Research Foundation of Ukraine.
It follows up a webinar on Scientific Data about Society in Ukraine, also organised by the ESFRI SWG SSH together with the European Alliance of the Social Sciences and Humanities (EASSH), in May 2023, which received a lot of interest by the Ukrainian and European social sciences and humanities (SSH) research infrastructures community. The ESFRI SWG SSH decided to continue its activities with Ukraine.
At the webinar, Ukrainian researchers, research managers, research funders and policy makers involved in European research infrastructures in SSH presented their projects and their challenges with developing research infrastructures in Ukraine. The aim was to discuss challenges, for instance in the field of data collection, data archiving and data access for the social sciences and humanities including tools and collaborations to understand the dynamics of the Ukrainian diaspora across European countries. As discussants, the Directors of four European research infrastructures provided their perspectives. Then followed a session on the support of Ukrainian participation in European research infrastructures with speakers from the Horizon Europe Office in Ukraine, the European Commission (DG RTD), the EURIZON project (European network for developing new horizons for research infrastructures) and an example from a national research funder (NWO from the Netherlands).
The webinar gathered over 100 participants, the majority of which was Ukrainian (living in Ukraine and in other parts of Europe), as well as researchers, research infrastructure managers and policymakers from all over Europe.