The European Research Council (ERC) is the European Commission’s body to fund and support high-quality research in Europe. It supports investigator-driven frontier research across all fields based on the principle of scientific excellence. As such it works closely with the Research Executive Agency (REA) of the EC.

On January 16, 2020, a joint ERC/REA seminar on the topic of science diplomacy was organised in Brussels. Tim Flink (on behalf of S4D4C) and Claire Mays (on behalf of InSciDE) as representatives of the EU science diplomacy cluster were invited as panellists. Other speakers included researchers supported by the ERC and the REA (Eystein Jansen, University of Bergen, Principal Investigator, “Arctic Sea Ice and Greenland Ice Sheet Sensitivity”, and Halvard Buhaug, Peace Research Institute Oslo, Principal Investigator, “Climate Variability and Security Threats”), EC officials (Angela Liberatore, ERC, Corinna Amting, REA, Maria Cristina Russo, Director International Cooperation, DG Research and Innovation, and Petri Backman, REA) The panel was moderated by Frank Kuhn, Science Officer at the ERC.


A full event review including the link to the recorded webstream of the event can be found on S4D4C’s website.

Tim Flink and Claire Mays from the EU Science Diplomacy Cluster in an ERC/REA workshop