What better way to launch a book on Moments of Valuation than to introduce future readers to pragmatic inquiry and discourse—over wine? And with two very different kinds of experts in the field: An academic who has written a wonderful chapter in our new book, and a wine-merchant who specializes in small vineyards! We tasted ideas, words, and wines.
Moments of Valuation– wine tasting, WZB March 25 2015
Sometimes the obvious has to be stated: sources are not just desirable, they are essential if we want to generate something identifiably new. At least in the academic world. Just what this means was the subject of a seminar on Plagiarism and the scientific process at the WZB last week, well led by an international expert in the field of good scientific practice, Debora Weber-Wulff (HTW Berlin).
Debora Weber-Wulff at WZB seminar March 20 2015
My professional life has offered me many opportunities to participate in advisory board meetings: as an advisor, as an advisee, and as an observer. After another such meeting today at the beautiful Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Nantes, for a major research project about Competences for CSR undertaken jointly by Audencia Nantes and the Ecole Centrale Nantes, I find it intriguing to look back and reflect on some of those experiences to consider the conditions that seem to favor the emergence of something new.
Simone Weil on science at Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Nantes
You really need to know about one special artist-led event at the Hidden Hunger congress 2015 that Ariane did not attend: The KRISENHERD / HotSPots on Thursday evening. Wanja Saatkamp invited the Hidden Hunger congress to participate in a collective cooking and eating experience, prepared by two of our guests: the social anthropologist Sebastian Schellhaas from Frankfurt/Main and the writer Yemisi Ogbe from Lagos, Nigeria. Wanja has been working artistically with the format of meals for some time, creating a mixture of debate club, cooking show, restaurant and informal gathering. She presented the format as Vagabundenküche in Summer 2014 during the infamous Vagabundenkongress at Theater Rampe.
Read MoreThe 2nd international Hidden Hunger congress hosted by the University of Hohenheim was information-rich. Between Tuesday March 3rd and Friday March 6th 2015 the program offered the approximately 360 participants from around the globe
by experts from numerous disciplines, such as nutrition, gynecology, pediatrics, agricultural sciences, and economics.
The scientific program was complemented by a “Science Meets Culture” stream , with 6 artists and 3 students from the Transdisciplinarity Master’s Program of the Zürich University of the Arts.
Read MoreThe scientists at the Hidden Hunger conference are working hard. Presenting their findings, listening to others’ findings, and discussing each others’ findings–about food and over food during coffee breaks and lunch breaks.
The artists are also working hard. Conducting artistic research, giving their emerging ideas form, and finding ways to display their reflections back to the scientists. The artists are quietly and persistently changing the conference space. And they are offering the scientists provocative invitations about food and over food.
Artists’ quotation-lunch-table-cover
All the participants I have spoken to during the breaks at the Hidden Hunger conference say they feel it is a good idea to have art here. So I want to know why? The most frequent reason they cite is that the arts help communicate science. For example, they tell me that art communicates complex connections more clearly than technical language and technical graphs do, it communicates in a more human way, it provides the interpretation in a real life context.
Read MoreWhich is more surprising: to hold a conference on the theme of Hidden Hunger at a Mövenpick hotel? Or to bring in artists to intervene in a conference of technical experts from around the globe?
Hidden Hunger Congress 2015 at Mövenpick Stuttgart
Whose hunger at Mövenpick Stuttgart?
Possibly one of the most frequently used tools in management is the SWOT exercise, to identify the strengths and weaknesses of an organization in the context of the opportunities and threats in its environment. Last week I experienced what happens when a facilitator takes a group through an upsidedown SWOT process: it generates the unexpected and the new. Maybe especially if the exercise is conducted in an ideal location that offered wide-open views and fresh perspectives, like an old villa called Blumenfisch, directly on a Berlin lake in the sunshine of a very early Spring.
View of Wannsee from Blumenfisch terrace
Does what we researchers see on the way to work influence what we think when we get to our desks? Might it affect our capacity to generate newness? Having moved this month to a new office in a completely different setting from my previous one, the sights I pass have changed dramatically.
WZB, Reichpietschufer 50
The EUREF Campus: “Das Stadtquartier von Morgen”
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