This conference serves as a platform for fostering collaboration between academia and professionals to advance collaborative research that has real-world impact. By bringing together researchers and practitioners, we aim to:
- Explore collaborative research methods that effectively bridge academic insights and industry challenges, concerns, and needs.
- Overcome barriers to impactful partnerships, including differences in priorities, language, and methodologies.
- Tackle urgent challenges in the digital transition, particularly within public administration and media industries.
- Advance responsible AI and data practices through interdisciplinary dialogue and shared expertise.
- Inspire new synergies between academia and practitioners that lead to sustainable and actionable research-practice collaboration.
What’s In It for Attendees?
- Engaging Keynotes:
- Rob Kitchin (Maynooth University Social Sciences Institute) – Performing Critical Data Studies from the Inside: Working with Government to Change Data Regimes
- Payal Arora (Utrecht University) – Building Inclusive Tech with the Global South
- Minna Ruckenstein (University of Helsinki) – Collaborative Explorations as ‘Breathing Spaces for Digital Futures’
- Interactive Workshops: Workshops will provide attendees with hands-on introduction to real-world examples of academia-industry collaborations, strategies for building inclusive digital ecosystems that connect research, policy, and design, and methods for identifying their own values, vocabularies, and pathways for impact. Participants will also learn how to collaborate effectively in interdisciplinary teams to address real-world challenges, explore practical tools that help media industries navigate AI and data ethics, understand the role of design thinking in producing more effective and impactful research, and examine how workshops can serve as a tool for shaping and implementing better policy.
- Panels on Impact: Two panels will offer participants insights into how collaborative research between academia and societal sectors can inform university teaching, which impact metrics are both feasible and desirable, what qualifies as appropriate indicators of impact, and how best to document and evaluate them.
Why Attend?
For collaboration to be truly reciprocal, researchers need to engage directly with professional contexts where digitalization is happening. These settings bring together stakeholders with diverse perspectives, values, and needs. By embracing the complexity of real-life challenges, researchers can collaborate effectively with practitioners and other external partners, leading to meaningful impact. At the same time, organizations increasingly seek academic validation for their approaches, turning to universities for rigorous research insights. This creates an opportunity for researchers to move beyond observation and actively shape emerging practices.
When research is embedded in practice, in real-world contexts, both sides benefit – practitioners gain deeper analytical perspectives and researchers develop a more grounded understanding of real-world challenges. Together, they generate knowledge that not only addresses these challenges but also drives meaningful societal impact. This conference explores both the transformative potential and the obstacles of this kind of collaborative research.