Throughout the last eighteen months, members of our Focus Group on Public Engagement have contributed to a scholarly blog exploring what Public Engagement is practised across the LERU member universities. We took turns in monthly posts to outline the Public Engagement taking place at our home universities and within our research spheres, sharing our experiences of teaching, training, research and outreach activities that integrate Public Engagement into them. As underscored by the title of our blog series, Forging Connections: Public Engagement in Europe and Beyond, our aim has been to provide a platform for diverse voices in order to ignite conversations around how Public Engagement can be embedded within LERU member organisations and beyond, in meaningful and practical ways.

Standards, Case Studies, Tools & Training
Very broadly, our blog series has three areas of focus: standards, case studies, and training. In terms of standards, the opening post from Sarah Barnes, Head of Public Engagement at University College London, establishes the fundamental terms – those of Public Engagement, Citizen Science, and Co-Production – that the rest of the series is based upon, while Dr Lucinda Spokes, Head of Public Engagement and David Cain, Cambridge Festival Manager, discuss different engagement formats – In-Person, Hybrid, Online – and how these lead to different Public Engagement opportunities.
The case studies, meanwhile, identify how individuals and groups have approached the challenges of implementing Public Engagement. Olivia Höhener, Managing Director of Citizen Science Zurich at the University of Zurich, talked with Chantal Britt, research associate at Bern University, on her experience as a Citizen Scientist. Drs Lauren Gould & Saskia Stevens, discuss their roles as Public Engagement Fellows at Utrecht University. Victoria Brotto highlights her work as Citizen Science project manager at Citizen Lab – Open University of Strasbourg (OPUS). And in order to strengthen public trust in ICT, Prof. dr ir Vincent Rijmen, and Prof. em. dr ir Joos Vandewalle, from LERU University KU Leuven, argue that open research and public scrutiny of the security of the used encryption standard is essential.
Finally, focusing on their university’s Public Engagement training programmes, Dr Josep Perelló, Full Professor at the University of Barcelona looks at the university’s launch of a certified training program on Citizen Science, and Melanie Brand from Citizen Science Zurich at the University of Zurich shares her experience on integrating research-based teaching with Citizen Science at the BA and MA level.
Future Steps
This process was invaluable for our own approaches to Public Engagement: putting our own conceptions of Public Engagement down in writing, as well as interacting with our colleagues’ experiences and expertise, was a very enriching way to reflect and build upon our individual practices. Indeed, working in partnership on the LERU Public Engagement Scholarly Blog has already led to several international in-person meetings between members of the group.
When looking at these posts in dialogue with each other, what we noticed emerging was the importance of translating values into action; hence the title of this concluding post. The concept of Public Engagement entails noble goals, but what is crucial is following through on these beliefs with concrete actions.
We would therefore hope to see small, concrete actions taken as a result of our scholarly blog. As the series led to several in-person meetings between members, we believe it would be beneficial to have future opportunities to establish an official programme through LERU: one that could be used to support and promote exchanges, such as work visits between LERU member organisations, which could subsequently implement the outcomes.
Future Challenges
When setting out on the blog we anticipated that the term Public Engagement would be a broad umbrella term that incorporated a wide number of activities. When exploring these ideas on a more granular level, we soon realised that there are many activities which are not yet codified as Public Engagement but should be, while other activities may fall under the term in a more nebulous sense, or indeed, are not really Public Engagement in any serious sense. We realised that the challenge of setting out perimeters of what entails Public Engagement therefore falls, in large part, to the Public Engagement and Citizen Science groups themselves to shape and direct the future of the sector.
While this post brings to a close the current iteration of our blog series, we hope that the momentum created therein will continue, and that our reflections will spark further discussions leading to action among others within the LERU community, who may wish to take up these Public Engagement challenges. As such, we offer some of the talking points that the series led us to:
– Who benefits from the concept of Public Engagement? We are now seeing Public Engagement activity become part of the evaluation for the selection and promotion of candidates. When is this encouraging genuine rigorous attempts at Public Engagement and when is it becoming another box-ticking activity?
– When is engaging with the public not Public Engagement? At the moment many extraneous activities are labelled as Public Engagement. For example, is a news article detailing research activity Public Engagement because members of the public will read it? Do we need to have an awareness of deeper, more sustained applications of Citizen Science?
– On the other side of the coin,what research isn’t acknowledged as Citizen Science that should be? What groups are traditionally engaging in Citizen Science/Public Engagement but are not recognised as such? What can be done to ensure these voices are recognised?
– What role can universities play in helping students, researchers, and community members develop key skills such as collaboration, communication, and critical thinking? There is a growing demand for socially conscious and scientifically literate professionals who can navigate complex societal challenges. How can we collaborate within the LERU community to teach Citizen Science research-related skills?
– What standards and criteria of Public Engagement do we want to see at university level? Often researchers will bring their own views and biases to their Public Engagement work: when does this spill over into the world of activism? Rather than simply asking for an increase in Public Engagement, should more be done to ensure that it reaches an agreed-upon standard?
Many Thanks
Finally, we want to acknowledge other LERU members who acted as supports for our blog series. Dr Frank Miedema, who was the Chair of Open Science Programme, Utrecht University, was instrumental in the transition towards Open Science. We also want to extend our sympathies to the family, friends and colleagues of Dr Paul Ayris, the Pro-Vice-Provost at University College London (UCL), who officially took over responsibility for our focus group last year. Paul sadly passed away in December. We are very grateful for the support and advice he provided to our group.
OpenEdition suggests that you cite this post as follows:
Sarah Cullen (April 21, 2026). Translating Values into Action: LERU Public Engagement Scholarly Blog and the Future of European Research. LERU Public Engagement Scholarly Blog. Retrieved June 5, 2026 from https://lerupesb.hypotheses.org/827