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Themed article
Societally relevant research and ethics:
The importance of reflexivity, positionality and legitimacy our longstanding knowledge and experience in societally relevant research with the whole university and strengthen our relationships within EUR. This was nicely expressed in the final strategic plan with its many references to ISS’ societally relevant research in the Global South. ISS has long identified its key values as social justice and equity;2 values that have motivated our teaching, research and engagement activities. With these values we aim to achieve social justice by conducting research among marginalized groups, by conducting critical social science research and by creating new academic knowledge and generating societally relevant outcomes such as policy advice, interventions, advocacy and so on. Client-based care in De Hoven, the Netherlands. Participatory research project. ©Hennink et al
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n 2019, Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) defined its 2024 strategic plan with its objective of creating positive societal impact. The underlying Erasmian Values1 include being societally engaged and open-minded, connecting and entrepreneurial, and world citizenship. In line with Rokeach (1973), these values can be seen as instrumental to reaching the ultimate goal. That is, these values motivate us to achieve impact in research on local-global societal challenges.
Inge Hutter is outgoing rector of ISS
From my perspective as rector of ISS, the EUR Strategy 2024 has meant a lot for ISS and for our integration in EUR. The strategy’s direction enabled us to share
The publication Social Impact @ sciences: the end of the ivory tower? (Van Bergeijk and Johnson, 2014) reflects ISS’ efforts in defining and operationalizing societal relevance over time. For me, the document served as an important guideline in my application for ISS rectorship eight years ago. Being a participatory action researcher myself, I was looking forward to following this up and further co-developing aspects of societally relevant research and engagement at ISS. What does it mean to conduct societally relevant research or research for social change, or – as EUR defines it – to conduct research with impact? In the second edition of Qualitative Research Methods (Hennink, Hutter and Bailey,