2nd Sister Project meeting

On 14 September, the SHAPEDEM-EU coordinators met with their colleagues from EMBRACE and REDEMOS for an online session to exchange on experiences made so far since the three projects commenced their work, and to explore avenues for future coordinated policy engagement.

As fieldwork is due to commence in all three projects, special attention was given to ethical considerations in the case countries and their potential challenges for research activities. An exchange on individual ethics approaches by each of the projects was highly appreciated by participants.

A further point was the proposal of a regional partner exchange since research in some of the case countries is overlapping. The discussions revolved around how to align and coordinate partners, e.g. for the Southern Neighbourhood where SHAPEDEM-EU has a particular focus, as well as to promote regional exchanges. Thus, possibilities for a joint peer-learning in late 2023/early 2024 were explored. The SHAPEDEM-EU coordinators suggested to initiate an online "Democracy Pub" to foster peer-exchange between the three projects.

Finally, EMBRACE and REDEMOS were kindly invited to participate at SHAPEDEM-EU's upcoming first Annual Progress Meeting, taking place in Krakow in early October.

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