Initial situation

Internationality has always been a constitutive part of the HWR mission and values and has imbued the fields of teaching, learning and research. Some professors have already been actively involved in international projects (i.e. in a large joint research project funded by the 7th framework programme) whereas others have engaged in projects funded by the BMBF or other funding institutions that primarily address research problems within a national framework. Excellent research at the HWR has been mainly carried out in three interdisciplinary key research clusters (1. Social and Economic Transformation Processes, 2. ICT-Innovation in Corporate and Public Administration, 3. Social and Legal Security Research).

Objective

Through the project EU-Strategie-FH of the HWR Berlin we intend to pursue two objectives:

1. We want to strengthen the existing excellent research with mainly national focus by connecting it internationally through co-operations with European partners. In doing so the HWR will integrate its research competences into the EU-wide knowledge creation process.
2. We want to provide a solid foundation for the existing EU co-operations in order to enable continuity and expansion.

Within the Horizon 2020 societal challenges framework the HWR Berlin had initially identified three main research areas:

I) Social and Legal Aspects of Civil Security Research
II) Economic Research in the Area of Political Economy
III) Economics and Gender Research

After the publication of the work programme 2018-20 the project activities of the HWR have been increasingly opened to other research areas.

Activities

The work of the project staff is characterized by a continuous process of information, activation and the advising in proposal preparation.

Initially, three EU project developers had been employed in order to increase the number of EU applications in the identified key research areas. After the ministry approved for project continuation, which temporally coincided with the conceptualization of the new work programme 2018-20, the number of research fields to be strategically supported by the project staff has been extended in order to better exploit the opportunities offered by the new work programme. Since then, one person in the EU service point is responsible for the above-mentioned process, whereas other fixed-term research assistants work on EU applications.

Information includes, for example, the communication about new calls and topics, the organisation of information events about Horizon 2020 building on the knowledge exchange in further networks which the HWR is part of (i.e. Berlin universities’ EU Officers, EU-Strategie-FH).
The activation of professors to participate in or coordinate EU projects is especially supported through the financing of fixed-term research assistants. Advising of proposal preparation covers e.g. strategic consultation, communication with partners, budget calculation and strategic proofreading.
In order to guarantee the sustainability of the newly created knowledge within the HWR an EU research wiki is being developed.

Duration

2015-1-1 to 2019-12-31

Website of Project