Project Info: Phase 3

We are facing a wide range of global challenges, such as climate change and biodiversity loss. These challenges are interconnected and very complex.   Knowledge concerning the relationships between geosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere is key to finding solutions that allow the earth to remain within the limits of ecosystem stability. Reconstructed past climate episodes and their atmospheric mechanisms can be utilised to forecast and model future climate and environmental conditions. However, our understanding of Earth’s system is incomplete. Major questions have been only partially or inadequately answered, e.g., under what conditions was life able to develop and evolve on Earth? How do biodiversity, earth surface conditions and climate interact with each other? There is a need to create a full-scale knowledge base for climate protection and adaptation to climate change in order to adequately address such global and complex challenges.

Equally important though is the contribution of politics and the public, both of which need to understand the role of scientific results as a solid basis for planning and decision-making. However, we are experiencing a diminishing trust in science and a prevailing difficulty with engaging in evidence-based reasoning at all levels of society. There is an urgent need to bridge the gap between science and society, to build trust and to foster an understanding of the role of science in overcoming actual and future challenges.

In our science communication project INSIDER, we want to foster a more democratic relationship between science and society in order to provide a space for open, inclusive and informed discussions. Working with the CRC as an example of an interdisciplinary and international research project, focused on basic research in different cultural contexts, offers a chance not only to share factual results. Instead, the public can encounter scientists who share their stories and offer insights into the research process and the inherent (socio-cultural) contexts. It is important for people to understand how science works, i.e., how researchers come to their findings and statements using evidence and data, and that furthermore, new data might lead to the reinterpretation of phenomena, sometimes including controversies between science experts. Through our science communication project, society members will become INSIDERs, allowing them to not only get a better understanding of science and research but also to develop “science literacy” (i.e., the ability to engage in reasoned discourse about science, sustainability and technologies and draw conclusions for informed action), a vital requirement for active, responsible citizenship.

In this project, we will develop an interactive exhibition that will explicitly combine the CRC’s research results (knowledge in science) with information about the scientists’ ways of working and salient characteristics of the natural sciences (knowledge about science). The exhibition will be shown in Germany as well as in Chile and Namibia. In addition, we will organise accompanying science communication activities and events that foster the dialogue between the CRC’s scientists and the public.