DDRN is back!

On 14 January 2019, DDRN held its first General Assembly since a relaunch of DDRN was initiated in the second half of 2016. The General Assembly elected the members of the DDRN Board 2019-2020 (see below) to replace an Interim Board functioning during 2016-18.

DDRN’s board members (in alphabetical order) are:

See photo and affiliation of Board members on the ‘About us’ page

Among the activities by the secretariat reported to the General Assembly were:

• DDRN members, who had registered in the database of the previous DDRN website, have been invited to re-register and update their membership in the new DDRN database. The total of newly registered DDRN members medio February 2019 stands at two hundred fifty and it is steadily growing.
• The DDRN editorial team has formed a network of, so far, ten corresponding science journalists based in Africa and South America; the network is expanding to include more countries, also in Asia.
• The Grassroot Foundation has approved an application for a DDRN e-book project with a grant of DKK 3.000.
• The Science Faculty of University of Copenhagen has contributed in-kind (staff hours) to a joint production of podcasts to be published on DDRN.dk.
• The DDRN editorial team has established a SoMe presence of DDRN on Facebook and Linkedin.
• DDRN is currently involved as a partner in two applications for research project funding
• Jointly with the Association of Danish Science Journalists, DDRN is submitting an application for a communication project on UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Among the activities targeted for 2019 are:

• An essay competition for PhD students from Global South countries currently studying in Denmark to present their project.
• Make the unique mission of DDRN known to the Danish research communities
• Compile a National mapping report
• Match making workshops between researchers in Denmark and in Global South countries on a few selected research themes

Following the General Assembly, Jens Degett, Chairman of the Danish Science Journalists’ Association and Chairman of the European Union of Science Journalists’ Associations gave a seminar on the launch of his new project ‘Science Stories’  funded by the NovoNordisk Foundation and the new directions for research communication. ‘Science Stories’ is a new communication initiative on the social media platform. Jens explained why the conditions for communicating research have changed and why private foundations are now supporting communication via social media.

Download Jens Degett’s slide presentation as a PDF file.