Large research projects aim to provide scientific findings and are often the basis for societal and political developments and, due to the path dependency of politics, point the way for subsequent developments. Generally, the projects are developed and decided upon within the scientific community and with the involvement of the funding agencies. For the implementation of research results, however, there are numerous relevant civil society stakeholders in addition to scientific actors.
The overall aim of the project is to integrate questions from society into research-driven projects that will shape the structures of society as a whole in the long term. Only through early involvement the room for participation can be exploited. To this end, different formats will be evaluated with regard to their suitability for early participation of these stakeholders in application processes and the results will be made available in the form of a handbook.
The current project to digitise and index the collections of the Museum für Naturkunde serves as a case study. For this purpose, the project partners conduct five so-called inspiration workshops at the Museum für Naturkunde and document them in order to use them for a later application. The events taking place can be found here.