Late September I attended two seminars in Beijing, China as part of a delegation of the MoniQA Network of Excellence on Monitoring and Quality Assurance in the Food Supply Chain. The first meeting was a small gathering with experts from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (CAAS) on research collaboration between China and Europe and thematic priority areas. The second was a training seminar for food scientists working in the mycotoxin area of risk assessment. This provided me with the opportunity to present the joint work of the ICCR and TUBITAK (Turkey) on the regulatory impact assessment of food standards regarding aflatoxins in hazelnuts. (This will be the subject of a forthcoming publication). (more…)

We regret to announce that three members of the ICCR left the institute at the end of August 2009.

Katherine Dolan, who worked on the ECO-BUILD project, is taking up an internship at the European Commission in Brussels.

After very many years at the institute, Niki Rodousakis has taken leave of absence to continue her private further education studies.

After receiving a scholarship from the Austrian Institute for Higher Studies, Andreas Schadauer will be devoting all his time to completing his Ph. D. thesis in the field of sociological theory.

We send these colleagues and friends our very best wishes on their respective career paths.

International Conference, 22-23 October 2009, Brussels, Belgium

Social Sciences and the Humanities have an important mission in the knowledge society and for evidence-based politics. However, their role is not always appreciated and their inputs are not always effectively used. There are discrepancies between the potential importance of social science knowledge and the comparatively low attention they receive from politics, other scientific fields and the public as a whole. To reach society, the economy and the political system, good interaction is required between the different intellectual communities, an interaction that overcomes traditional feuds between schools and disciplines.

At the final conference of the SSH-FUTURES project commissioned by DG Research in the 6th Framework Programme in Brussels in October a workshop will be held on the topic of ‘The Future of Social Sciences and Humanities’. The conference will be a two-day event held. On the first day, the members of the SSH-FUTURES consortium will present the results of their study and discuss potential recommendations and conclusions. The second day will be devoted to the results of similar projects. (more…)

The ICCR is a non-profit research centre, which finances itself predominantly with research projects. It is the ICCR’s mission to produce intelligent political and social science research for European societies.

The institute is currently working on a series of European research projects in the fields of “Science, Society and Culture”. The ICCR offers three positions for internship in these fields for young researchers. This offer is valid for young researchers, who have yet to complete their studies or have just completed their studies. The internship offers the opportunity to gain practical experience in research as well as the usage of social methodology, and also in scientific authorship.

Two internships for Political Science/Political Analysis
(3 or 6 months; 20-35 hours/week; stipend up to €1.000,00/month [net]).

One internship for Cultural Sociology
(3 or 6 months, 20-35 hours/week; stipend up to €1.000,00/month [net])

Any applications for the 2010 internships received later than the 15th of October 2009 at the ICCR cannot be considered.

Application Guidelines

• A statement on yourself, your career plans and your interest in the ICCR and the specific job vacancy
• Curriculum Vitae
• List of publications (for joint publications identify main author)
• One example of written work (up to 20 pages) in English

Deadline: 15th October 2009

Contract start-dates: November 2009; January or July 2010

Send your application to: jobs@iccr-international.org