"Excellent research must integrate different viewpoints to get the full picture of any topic"
Iciar Astiasarán, Associate Dean of Research, spoke at the Institute for Culture and Society's Fourth Annual Meeting
The Institute for Culture and Society's Fourth Annual Meeting was held on November 20 and was attended by hundreds of people, including ICS researchers, collaborators, administrative staff and service providers, as well as people from other centers at the University of Navarra.
Iciar Astiasarán, Associate Dean of Research at the University, opened the session, followed by Jaime García del Barrio, the ICS Director and then by Ana Marta González, the ICS Academic Director.
Prof. Astiasarán dedicated her talk to promoting interdisciplinarity, emphasizing that "excellent research must integrate different viewpoints to get the full picture of any topic." From the quantitative point of view, Prof. Astiasarán noted that recent biblio-metric research reports from the humanities and social sciences show that the University has increased its academic output in these areas.
Along with the need to increase the quality and quantity of this output, the Associate Dean noted two other factors of great importance: transferring this knowledge to society and accountability.
Finally, she stressed the importance of achieving "high success rates" in the 2020 European Horizon call through the submission of "competitive and well prepared" research.
2013-2014: 20 books, 59 articles, 117 internal activities and 8 conferencesMeanwhile, Jaime Garcia del Barrio recalled some figures from the 2013-2014 academic year: 20 books and 59 academic articles were published, with more than 80% of those articles published A, B or Excellence rated journals. More than 117 internal activities and 8 international conferences and workshops were organized. In terms of the budget, 2.63 million Euros were spent, of which 52.4% was obtained through external funding.
The invited speakers at this meeting included professor Javier Gil Sevillano, director of the CEIT Materials department, who spoke on "Materials and Society," and Charo Sádaba, professor within the Department of Media Management of the School of Communication, who analyzed the "The light and dark ways that technology impacts contemporary lifestyles."
Two round tables were held. The first, moderated by Inés Olza (from the Public Discourse project), included contributions from Pedro Mendi (Navarra Center for International Development), Alejandro Vigo (Natural Law and Practical Rationality project), Luis Echarte (Mind-Brain project) and José Miguel Carrasco (ATLANTES project). The second, which was moderated by María Arantzamendi (from the ATLANTES project) included contributions from Omar Rosas (Emotional Culture and Identity project), Jokin de Irala (Education of Human Affectivity and Sexuality project), David Thunder (Religion and Civil Society project) and Christopher Pagan (Public Discourse project).