for Cognitive and
Affective Neuroscience
The European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience aims to promote scientific enquiry within the field of human cognitive, affective and social neuroscience, particularly with respect to collaboration and exchange of information between researchers in different European countries through scientific meetings, workshops, summer schools, and such other activities.
ESCAN Contact
Suzanne Oosterwijk (Secretary) escan@escaneurosci.eu
ESCAN has signed the Agreement on Research Assessment
ESCAN has signed the Agreement on Research Assessment prepared by the Coalition on Reforming the Research Assessment.
What is the Coalition?
The Coalition has been called for by the European Commission early in 2022. The Coalition brings together research funding organisations, research performing organisations, national/regional assessment authorities or agencies, associations of research funders, of research performers, of researchers, as well as, learned societies and other relevant organisations, all committed to implement reforms to the current research assessment system. For more information see:
What is the Agreement on reforming research assessment?
The Agreement primarily advocates for going away from shallow and blind following of metrics in evaluation of research (be it at the individual research level or institution level) and advocates for more peer-review in-depth evaluations.
The main principles are the following:
• recognizing diversity of contributions and careers in research (e.g., diverse outputs beyond journal publications, activities including teaching, leadership, supervision, mentoring)
• basing research assessment primarily on qualitative evaluation for which peer review is central, supported by responsible use of quantitative indicators
• abandoning inappropriate uses in research assessment of journal and publication-based metrics (journal IFs, h-index)
• avoiding use of rankings of research organizations in assessment
You can find the entire text under this link:
and here for a summary:
What is the background of the Agreement?
The Agreement has been prepared by a team nominated by the European Commission. The nominated team is composed of representatives from the European University Association (EUA), Science Europe, and the European Commission. The process of drafting the Agreement was initiated in January 2022. More than 350 organisations from over 40 countries provided feedback and consultations to the drafting team, in the context of the ERA Forum, in which current ESCAN president Agnieszka Wykowska is a delegate. ERA Forum is a forum where representatives of the European Commission of EU Member States as well as stakeholders’ groups discuss science policies at the European and national level. Organisations that provided feedback on the Agreement drafts included public and private research funders, universities, research centres, institutes and infrastructures, associations and alliances thereof, national and regional authorities, accreditation and evaluation agencies, learned societies and associations of researchers, and other relevant organisations, representing a broad diversity of views and perspectives.
Who are the signatories?
To date, the agreement has received 378 signatories, >60% of those are universities and their associations.
Here you can find signatories so far:
What does it mean for ESCAN?
• ESCAN participated in the first constitutive assembly of the coalition on the 1st of December, represented by Agnieszka Wykowska and Giorgia Silani. During this first assembly, the governance of CoARA was voted upon, the Chair and the members of the Steering Board have been elected. ESCAN will participate in all further general assemblies of CoARA and the representatives will report to ESCAN membership should there be any substantial developments.
• ESCAN can contribute to COARA by adhering to the values of COARA in evaluating researchers, for example, for the Young Investigator Award of ESCAN. In addition, ESCAN can contribute by organizing “raising awareness” events at ESCAN conferences.
We hope to have informed you sufficiently.
With kind regards,
The ESCAN Board
invitation to vote for new ESCAN board members
All ESCAN full members have received an invitation by e-mail to vote for the new members of the ESCAN Board. We have three vacancies for the Board and the following four ESCAN Full members have applied as candidates (in alphabetical order):
Nicolas Burra (University of Geneva, Switzerland)
Francesca Ciardo (Italian Institute of Technology, Italy)
Laura Crucianelli (Karolinska Institutet, Sweden)
Elisabeth Friedrich-Higgs (Ludwig-Maximillians-Universität Munich (LMU), Germany)
We asked each candidate to write a short statement to introduce themselves and motivate their candidacy for the ESCAN Board. You can access the motivational statement from each candidate through this link
ESCAN Young Investigator Award 2022
The Young Investigator Award of the European Society for Cognitive and
Affective Neuroscience honors the early achievements of scientists working in
the area of Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience and is meant to encourage the
career development and scientific endeavors in the field. This year we have two
ex-aequo winners of the ESCAN Young Investigator Award:
Dr Camilla Nord has made substantial and innovative contributions at the
intersection of cognitive-affective neuroscience and mental health as evidenced
by numerous high quality publications that highlight the translational
importance of reliable and robust measures.
Dr Emiel Cracco has made substantial and innovative contributions in the
fields of social perception and action representations as evidenced by a number
of high quality publications that advance a coherent theoretical framework of
social perception that scales up from one person to many actors.
Both awardees have shown academic independence, a strong commitment to Open
Science practices, and possess a strong track record in wider dissemination of
academic research.
We offer our warmest congratulations to both. We look forward to their
future research and to meeting them at the ESCAN conference 2022 in Vienna to
hear more about their research.
Beyond these awards, ESCAN would like to confer a ‘Commendation Award
for Open Science’ to Dr Lei Zhang for their commitment to advance
Open Science tools in the fields of social, cognitive and affective
neuroscience.
Congratulations!
With warm wishes,
The ESCAN Board
ESCAN 2022 Vienna
We are very happy to invite you to the sixth bi-annual conference of the European Society for Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (ESCAN) that will be held in Vienna, Austria, between 19th and 22nd of July 2022.
Information can be found at www.escan2022.eu
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the local organizers at escan2022.psychologie@univie.ac.at
We look forward to seeing you in Vienna!
Phishing emails from ESCAN Board Members
Dear members,
It has come to our attention that some members of the Society have been receiving emails from what appear to be the email addresses of board members asking for help, which typically involve money transfers. Please note that:
- We are aware of the situation
- The email addressed that they use are not correct but look very similar to our actual email addresses
- We would never under any circumstances ask you to make any money transfer
Please ignore such emails and stay vigilant for online scams
Best wishes
Manos