The website has recently been updated (date: September 18, 2023).

The 3rd annual conference "Methods in Risk Research" will be held at IU Internationale Hochschule in Karlsruhe, Germany, from September 27-28, 2023. The SRA-E DACHL Chapter as the organiser would like to invite everyone interested in methodological discussions in the field of risk research to join the conference.

Important information for the conference attendees

The conference will take place at IU Campus Karlsruhe (Address: Blücherstraße 20 in 76185 Karlsruhe; near station: Yorckstraße). The room is on the ground floor (room: "Marktplatz"). If you have any questions, reach out to Christoph Böhmert (christoph.boehmert@iu.org). 

Coming to Karlsruhe and where to stay

Following this link we put together a detailed description on how to get to the Campus and conference dinner as well as some recommendations for hotels to stay at in Karlsruhe.

Programme

The programme of the conference is now available through this link.

The aim of the conference is to present and discuss established or innovative methods of risk research. Contributions from all areas of risk research are welcome (i.e., risk analysis, risk evaluation, risk management, risk communication, risk perception, risk behaviour, risk governance and related fields). The contributions should preferably convey the advantages, disadvantages, effectiveness, validity, and possible applications of the methods presented. Scientists from different disciplines doing research on different risk topics (e.g., health risks, environmental risks, economic risks) are strongly encouraged to participate in the conference. The conference aims to bring together scientists of all levels of experience - from students to established scientists.

Keynotes

Dr. Philipp Sprengholz (University of Erfurt) will share insights from COVID-19 Snapshot Monitoring (COSMO) study, a national survey on pandemic-related perceptions and behaviours. The longitudinal study was started in spring 2020 and is ongoing.

Philipp Sprengholz is a researcher at the Institute for Planetary Health Behavior at the University of Erfurt. Trained as a health psychologist, his research focuses on health decision making and the influence of individual risk assessments. In the past three years, Philipp has been part of the COVID-19 Snapshot Monitoring (COSMO), a study series that has been investigating perceptions and behaviors of the German public since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic. His findings were published in over 20 peer-reviewed publications. In his talk, Philipp will discuss different measures for assessing pandemic risk perceptions and their predictive validity for explaining risk behaviors. Furthermore, recent findings on the recall of pandemic risk perceptions will be presented, indicating strong memory biases that will affect societal debates about future pandemic preparedness and the appropriateness of political action in general. https://sprengholz.github.io/

Professor Dr. habil. Peter M. Wiedemann will critically examine the relevance of surveys on risk perceptions for policy advice. Based on an online study (N = 1653) he will argue that risk perceptions can be recorded in a more differentiated way if the affective, thematic, and motivational relevance of risk perceptions are explicitly assessed.

Peter M. Wiedemann is retired since 2014 but still active as researcher. Currently, he is an adjunct professor at the Monash University, Melbourne.  In the years before, he was appointed as a honorary professorial fellow at the university of Wollongong, Australia. In his last position before retirement as speaker of the Science Forum EMF in Berlin, Germany, he developed a dialogue platform for better science communication in risk controversies. Prior to his appointment, he was the director of the Program Group “Humans, Environment and Technology” at the Research Centre Jülich in Germany. Until 2018, Peter taught at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.

Contributions

Contributions can be in the form of short talks, posters and/or hands-on demonstrations. The contributions describe the method and explain its advantages, disadvantages, effectiveness, validity, and possible applications. For example, ...

• an established method could be presented and discussed,
• a validation of a scale can be described, or
• speakers could introduce an innovative form of data collection, measurement, or statistical evaluation.

The conference is designed in such a way that there is plenty of time for discussion - also and especially about the transfer of individual methods from one risk topic to another or from one discipline to another.

Abstract submission

Abstract submission is now closed. Registration without submission of abstracts is possible until August 31^st 2023. If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Josianne Kollmann. (Josianne.Kollmann@eawag.ch).

Conference fees

Conference fees include beverages, two lunches, and the conference dinner. SRA-E members pay €60 (students €30), and non-SRA-E members pay €80 (students €40). The fees are excl. a small handling fee. Two scholarships for students (€300) are available. These student scholarships will be alocated by the SRA-E DACHL board based on the submitted abstract and an additional motivation statement.