10 June 2011 | General, ISCH
Health, Humanities, Media, Technology, Political Science, Law, Economy and Business… all in one word? ISCH!
The COST Scientific Domain for Individuals, Societies, Cultures and Health (ISCH) has held its annual progress conference in Brussels on 7 and 8 June 2011.
The COST ISCH Domain is perhaps the most diverse and multidisciplinary one of all the COST scientific fields. Home to humanities, this is the scientific domain where all social sciences meet. Over the course of its main annual conference, the ISCH Domain has assessed all the Actions that COST funds in this scientific field.
These Actions have been divided into a journey through five thematic groups, namely Health, Humanities, Media and Technology, Political Science and Law, Economy and Business.
Four COST Actions have been assessed in the field of Health, including‘Enhancing the role of Medicine in the Management of European Health Systems: Implications for Control, Innovation and User Voice’. This Action focuses on practitioners’ management performance and the relationship between medicine and management. Another Action belonging to the Health section of the ISCH conference is ‘Time in Mental Activity: Theoretical, Behavioural, Bioimaging and Clinical Perspectives’, aimed at investigating time perception and its interactions with action, attention, memory, and language. A number of these networks have had successful collaboration with international organisations: it is the case of a COST Action on ‘Health and Social Care for Migrants and Ethnic Minorities in Europe’, which established extensive cooperation with the WHO (World Health Organization). Another Action presented within the Health section of the conference focuses on infant and maternal care, such as ‘Childbirth Cultures, Concerns and Consequences: creating a dynamic EU framework for optimal maternity care’.
The conference then shifted to Humanities, with a panel presenting the work accomplished by the ‘European Research Network on Learning to Write Effectively’ and by another COST Action on ‘Interoperable Supranational Infrastructure for Digital Editors’. A COST contribution to literature and literacy is represented in this group by the Action ‘Women Writers in History: Towards a New Understanding of European Literacy Culture’; while ‘European Architecture beyond Europe: Sharing Research and Knowledge on Dissemination Processes, Historical Data and Material Legacy’ is studying European architecture across empires during the 19th and 20th centuries. Finally, a COST Action bringing together numerous scientific domains guides the ISCH community through the exploration of ‘Submerged Prehistoric Archaeology and Landscapes of the Continental Shelf’.
The Media and Technology ISCH family was introduced by an Action on ‘Science and Technology in a Knowledge-Based Economy’, which is consolidating insights on the impact of science and technology research on economic development and innovation and has, among others, contributed to harmonising official databases at EUROSTAT (Statistical Office of the European Union) and the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development). ‘Transforming Audiences, Transforming Societies’ is another COST Action in the field of Media and Technology dealing with the transformation of EU audiences within evolving media and communication societies, aimed at revitalising audience of research agenda. This Action has been particularly active in liaising with other EU-funded research projects as well as other COST Actions, such as COST Action IS0801 on Cyber-bullying.
Shifting to the Political Science and Law core of the ISCH domain, the COST Action on ‘International law in domestic courts’ reported on how countries use and apply international law in national legal suits, by enhancing the understanding of the application of international law in domestic courts and its effectiveness.
On the Economy and Business front, the ‘Telecommunications Economics COST Network’ is an Action at the crossroad of ISCH and ICT, identifying sustainable business models in telecommunications to support R&D, such as reduced mobile tariff for the needy within unemployment . ‘The Emergence of Southern Multinationals and their Impact on Europe’ is COST Action focusing on the world’s north-south divide, and studying the impact that increasing outward bound foreign-direct investment (FDI) from emerging economies has on Europe.
The last two Actions of this series have a more targeted focus on Finance and the corporate world. On the one hand, ‘Comparative Analysis of Enterprise Data’ is using enterprise micro-data in order to allow statisticians, economists and policy-makers to enhance international collaboration, produce cross-country comparative research, bring together academia, policy-makers and National Statistical Institutions. Among others, this Action has collaborated with the OECD and a number of FP7-funded projects. On the other hand, ‘Systemic Risks, Financial Crises and Credit’ is investigating the systemic risks linked to the financial crisis and the changes in financial markets that might have been their cause, in a broad interdisciplinary approach that gathers economic sociologists, economists and policy-makers.
Contact Information
Dr
Julia Stamm
Science Officer Individuals, Societies, Cultures and Health
COST Office
Belgium
julia.stamm@cost.eu
