r4d Forum 2014 Social Conflicts and Employment

r4d Forum 2014 Social Conflicts and Employment

The r4d Forum 2014 (Kick-off meeting) Social Conflicts and Employment took place from 28 to 30 April 2014. The meeting brought together 38 researchers from Switzerland, Africa, Asia and Latin America. 17 members of the Review Panels as well as representatives from development policy and practice also took part in the meeting at Kartause Ittingen. The participants had the opportunity to exchange and to discuss developmental as well as methodological challenges. Most of the research partnerships in the six recently started projects were new. Therefore, a meeting like the r4d Forum 2014 not only offered an opportunity to get to know each other and to discuss individual projects, it also represented a starting point for building a rapidly growing, interdisciplinary and multicultural r4d research and development community that gives equal value to scientific excellence and development relevance.

The meeting started with introductory welcome speeches and continued with parallel sessions for project presentations. It provided time slots for exchanges between research teams and Review Panel members. Furthermore, there were workshops on the topics impact and transdisciplinarity as well as interdisciplinarity and leadership in transnational research partnerships.

The r4d Forum 2014 revealed that at the project level many open questions still remain and many challenges are ahead for the project teams during the next years. At the same time, it provided an essential point of departure for joint activities.