The COVID-19 pandemic...

Pandemics are known to affect societies at large. COVID-19 has spread to many countries and its impact is huge: tens of thousands of people have died, the burden on healthcare workers and facilities is a matter of major concern, lockdowns are seriously damaging economies, social distancing has a huge impact on the well-being of citizens; inequality and social unrest are on the rise, tensions increase in international political relations. The longer it takes, the more difficult it gets for many people to comply with the measures imposed, which increases the risk of new spreading. Countries across the world are now slowly loosening the restrictions, but until there is a vaccine or medication, uncertainty remains. Relying on an effective vaccine to become available is not a safe bet either, since we still have an awful lot to learn about the virus itself.

... time to reflect

The COVID-19 pandemic has fuelled a huge amount of new research initiatives, leading to massive knowledge creation in many academic fields. At the same time, we know that this crisis is highly complex; everything is connected to everything else, in ways that are poorly understood. This implies that, if we want to take our knowledge development one step further towards creating actionable insights for strategic interventions (policy-oriented research), we need to foster exchange, debate and collaboration between the disciplines.

IAS) bring together researchers from all fields for a moment to reflect. The aim of these sessions is to explore new research avenues by combining insights from different disciplines and  collective pondering on the scientific questions that are still unsolved. Each session is focussed on a central theme or open question, and consists of one/two short presentations to set the scene, followed by a moderated discussion.

Schedule

• 3 July 2020 - Parsimonious representations of the Dutch contact network for COVID-19 modelling (initiator: Luc Coffeng)
• 25 Aug 2020 - Behaviour in the 1.5 meter society (initiator: Benjamin van Rooij)
• 1 Oct 2020 - Behaviour and quarantine / isolation (initiator: Benjamin van Rooij)
• 13 Nov 2020 - COVID-19 vaccination acceptance (initiators: Han van der Maas and Roland Pierik)
• 26 Nov 2020 - Effective social distancing in public spaces (initiator Denny Borsboom)
• Dec 2020 - Exit strategies (initiator Denny Borsboom)

Propose a theme

Researchers are invited to initiate new discussions by submitting a short proposal for themes or questions to be addressed. Science versus Corona and IAS can help you to find the right expertise for your session, and help you to organise the event.