ENGAGE.EU Think Tank

DATE: 30 May to 2 June
LOCATION: University of Toulouse 1 Capitole, France
APPLICATION DEADLINE: Apllication is already closed
SCIENTIFIC DIRECTOR: Professor Marion Fortin

Are you looking for a platform where you can focus on your research and push your project forward together with fellow researchers? At the ENGAGE.EU Think Tank, you can exchange your ideas with new research groups, get together with long-time colleagues, and learn from leading experts from industry, politics, and academia. This forum allows you to completely focus on a research project – away from everyday business.

ENGAGE.EU is an alliance of leading European universities in business, economics, and the social sciences that aims to provide European citizens with the skill set they need to face the challenges of the future. The ENGAGE.EU Think Tank is the Advanced Study Centre of our European University. It is a forum for intensive interdisciplinary academic exchange where researchers address the critical societal challenges of our time, where boundaries of research and innovation are challenged, where outstanding collaborations become possible, and where original thinking is the norm.

Visit https://www.engageuniversity.eu/engage-eu-think-tank-2023/ for more details. 

It was a successful premiere in the history of the European University ENGAGE.EU: From September 29 to October 2, 2022, 14 researchers from the nine ENGAGE.EU partner universities came together for the ENGAGE.EU Think Tank at the University of Mannheim. During the week-long research stay, they intensively explored the “Role of Digitization for Sustainable Development” and examined it from all angles, individually and in small research groups.

“The think tank is the first of its kind. It's an effort to bring researchers from different European universities together, thereby creating connections and establish collaborations,” explains Vidya Oruganti from the NHH Norwegian School of Economics.

The event also featured a number of digitalization experts from business, academia and politics, with whom participants were able to interact and exchange ideas, including Mariette Karamanli, Member of the French National Assembly and responsible for the regulation of digital platforms in Europe, Luka Mucic (CFO SAP) and Kristian Schier (Chief Architect SAP), who addressed supply chain disruptions and business networks, Vijay Ratnaparkhe, Chief Information Officer at Robert Bosch GmbH in the area of digitalization, and Norman Wingen of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development on taxation of the digitalized economy and taxation & sustainability.

For the researchers, the Think Tank was a great experience overall to present their research projects and to work out new suggestions and ideas together. For Ashley Metz from Tilburg University, it was also this networking aspect that stood out: “I'm excited to be here to work with others, working on digitalization in Europe and differnet societal applications. I'm hoping to leave with some contacts for further collaboration and ongoing projects.”

The variety of topics that the participants contributed impressively demonstrates the enormous bandwidth of the research focus “Digitalization”:

• Activity tracking for social science research
• How to foster a sustainable digital transformation, e.g. through taxes or subsidies
• Regulation of Artificial Intelligence
• How to repurpose technology and innovation for the social good and sustainability
• digital transformation from an extended knowledge perspective
• Digitalization of risk management in the context of climate-related hazards and natural disasters
• Mapping the living and breathing landscape of scholarly journals

Filippo Bontadini from Luiss University in Rome is currently studying how digitalization is related to social inequality, especially in the area of wage polarization. For him, the research visit was a great opportunity to exchange ideas about this relatively new phenomenon with other colleagues from related fields. “The personal contact is a great advantage because it opens up new discussions. We are now looking together whether there is a problem with digitalization and inequality or whether policy instruments exist that can be used to shape taxation to make digitalization works for everyone.”