EuroScience Open Forum 2024 in Katowice, Polen
ESOF 2024 "Life changes Science"
Die folgende Ankündigung ist - wie auch die Koferenz selbst - in englischer Sprache.
About EuroScience Open Forum (ESOF)
The EuroScience Open Forum is a biennial meeting designed to offer the scientific community a platform for interdisciplinary and intersectional debate about scientific culture, scientific research, and innovation. It is created for the society’s benefit and carried out with the society’s participation.
Goal of the conference
The main goal of the ESOF2024 conference is to explore the connections between science and society, the conditions for conducting research, and their impact on society. We aim to stimulate debate on social changes related to science and analyze the social, cultural, and economic consequences of scientific breakthroughs at regional, national, European, and global levels. In the face of global challenges and to enhance international scientific cooperation, scientists want to discuss science as a factor of change in our lives and how the very life changes science.
Programme
The programme includes lectures, seminars, a debate, workshops, poster presentations and exhibitions, interactive sessions, and a wide array of public engagement forms. The theme for the ESOF2024 is: Life changes science. Katowice will host Europe’s and the world’s leading personalities in the world of science, academic researchers, representatives of public and non-public institutions supporting science, business people, representatives of media, and those interested in the role of science in the contemporary world.
Summary of the CfD-Workshop (planned on the last day of the conference):
The "unique selling point" of humans should always be viewed with self-reflection. From a purely biological point of view, we humans are also animals. Our genes differ from mice by only around 5% and from chimpanzees by only 1%. In this session we look at human-animal relations from a Western educational perspective, a global animal ethics perspective and from a postcolonial literary studies perspective.
Interdisciplinary studies from the last few decades have shown that various educational programs involving animals have a positive effect. For example, there are studies that deal with closeness to nature. Pupils can benefit from direct interaction with animals. In England, there is a program in which secondary school students read to dogs. It has been proven that reading fluency was increased compared to reading aloud to the teacher. Dogs therefore seem to change the school or classroom environment.
From an animal ethics perspective, which also takes into account the living conditions of the so-called global South, a good relationship between humans and animals also plays an important role with farm animals, which has a positive effect on animal health.
From a postcolonial literary perspective, readers are invited to move beyond the binary between humans and animals that characterizes Western culture toward a position that would transcend and accommodate oppositions. Such a third space would simultaneously liberate a person and inscribe him/her in a democracy of fellow creatures.
Speaker:
- Dr. Maren Heincke, agricultural engineer and advisor for rural areas at the Centre for Social Responsibility of the Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau, Mainz, Germany
She has represented the EKD (Protestand Church in Germany) and the DBK (German Bishops' Conference) on the "Monitoring Committee for the National CAP Strategic Plan" since 2022. She has also represented the EKHN (Protestant Church in Hesse and Nassau) and EKKW (
Protestant Church of Kurhessen-Waldeck) on the "Hessian Animal Welfare Advisory Board" since 2022.
- Malgorzata Poks, PhD, Institute of Literary Studies, Faculty of Humanities, at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland
She does research in Cultural Anthropology, Abrahamic Religions and English Literature. She is interested in the intersection of Animal Studies and indigenous sovereignty.
- Dr. Dominiek Lootens, Head of Centre for Dialogue, Frankfurt, Germany
- Malwine Lenz, Frankfurt, Germany
- Jan Quirmbach, Frankfurt, Germany
Find out more about ESOF 2024 on their website www.esof.eu
