WPRN Project
At a time when the world is facing a major health challenge, the Natural and Life Sciences are mobilized to find vaccines and remedies. At the same time, the Social Sciences and Humanities have moved to the forefront to help our societies face the lockdown and the wave of socio-economic crisis that follows. This mobilization, because it is unprecedented, needs new resources to coordinate, and new formats to build reflexivity to learn from our successes and our mistakes in view of the next crises. The World Pandemic Research Network (WPRN) contributes to meeting these needs through its platform wprn.org.
WPRN offers an infrastructure serving research communities based on both crowdsourcing and the mobilization of distributed referent expertise. It documents in real time what is being done in the world. It allows everyone to record their resources (research projects, calls for proposals, surveys, seminars, etc.), and to know who is doing what and where, and to get in touch with the relevant projects.
WPRN differs from other initiatives by the priority given to the human and social sciences, the robustness of its infrastructure anchored in the cloud and because it mobilizes an international and interdisciplinary network of «referents» who sort the projects, providing a first level of scientific edition.WPRN allows the sharing of data, questionnaires, and hypotheses in real time while maintaining the intellectual property (authorship) system of tracking and accountability. WPRN creates the conditions for accelerating «good» research and the emergence of new collaborative research formats.
Initiated by the Paris Institute for Advanced Study and the RFIEA Foundation, WPRN is a non-profit research organisation. It has received support from the International Academic Union, which federates some 100 Academies in the humanities and social sciences in more than 60 countries, the European and global networks of Institutes of Advanced Studies NETIAS and UBIAS, the European Alliance for Social Sciences and Humanities (EASSH), the International Panel for Social Progress (IPSP) and the International Science Council (ISC).
WPRN also benefited form the generous support of the French ministry for Higher Education, Research and Innovation.
With over 1,000 registered research projects and initiatives, the online platform of the World Pandemic Research Network is the first tool enabling the community working on the on the human, economic, and societal impacts of Covid-19 to showcase, access and discuss projects.
WPRN 21 Conference in Paris
#WPRN21 conference goes one step further to encourage collective intelligence and foster interactivity. It is the first international forum bringing together researchers and practitioners from all areas of expertise and backgrounds working on the impacts of Covid-19, giving them the opportunity to present ongoing projects, share and disseminate insights and results, and to make connections for future collaboration.
During the December 9-10 WPRN conference, experts from all over the globe shared their insights and lessons learned from the pandemic in 9 Keynote presentations, as well as 6 topic panels comprising 39 research papers.
Recordings of all presentations can be found in the WPRN Playlist, and the full program is accessible here.
WPRN21 Conference Welcome
Conference Welcome with Saadi Lahlou (Paris Institute of Advanced Studies, London School of Economics and Political Science), chair of the WPRN21 Conference, Flore Gubert (French National Research Institute for Sustainable Development, Fondation Maison des Sciences de l'Homme - Sponsor of the Conference) and Maxi Heitmayer, (London School of Economics and Political Science and Paris Institute for Advanced Study), Secretary General of the Conference.