About Us

The Transfer Unit is a joint project of Wissenschaft im Dialog (WiD) and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities (BBAW). The project is funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Goals

The Transfer Unit promotes the exchange between science communication research and science communication practice. Our goal is to provide practitioners with access to research findings that are relevant to their work. At the same time, we want to provide insights into the needs of science communication practice and encourage the inclusion of these perspectives in the development of new research projects. By that, we want to support evidence-oriented science communication and establish a continuous dialog between research and practice. The closer exchange between research and practice can make an important contribution to high quality in science communication.

Activities

Research on science communication

The Transfer Unit first identifies the needs and questions of science communication practitioners by conducting a survey in the German speaking community. In a second survey wave, practitioners will be asked to prioritize the questions. The Transfer Unit will then aim to provide systematic overviews of the current state of research on the most highly ranked questions. To this end, meta- and secondary analyses, overview studies and expert reports are carried out, which compile findings from communication science, psychology, sociology, linguistics and other disciplines. In addition to the synthesis and systematization of practice-relevant research results, the state of research is also evaluated in terms of scientific significance and societal relevance.

Dialog with practitioners of science communication

The results of this systematization will be made accessible to science communication practitioners. For this purpose, formats are developed in close cooperation with practitioners that allow them to learn from the research results and thus offer a direct added value for their work in science communication. Through the organization of workshops and other events, we also want to enable a direct exchange between researchers and practitioners.