Five researchers received the Public Engagement Seed Fund this autumn

The 1923 Treaty of Lausanne not only marked the end of World War I, it also forced one and a half million people to move. But it is taught very differently on both sides of the Aegean. High school students in Greece and Turkey are each given a one-sided, nationalistic narrative of victimhood. This plants a seed for future conflict and prevents young people from acquiring important critical reading skills. This project brings together secondary school students and teachers to brainstorm new ways to discuss Lausanne and its legacy in the classroom.

Koen Leurs: ''In our VSNU Digital Society-funded project 'Co-designing a fair digital asylum procedure', we investigated the screening of smartphones by the Dutch border police. During this research, we co-created knowledge with border police, immigration services, lawyers and Refugee Council as well as former asylum seekers. Our interviews revealed that asylum seekers are not aware of the procedure for screening smartphones. As a next step in our project, we are now making a 2-minute animation video with stakeholders targeting prospective asylum seekers, as well as information sheets aimed at practitioners, such as field agents, NGOs and lawyers.''

The Indian Archipelago is rich in biodiversity and endemism (where an organism naturally occurs exclusively in one area). But geographical isolation is challenging the sustainability of natural ecosystems such as rainforests, mangroves, reefs and seagrasses and local biodiversity. Previously, there were no protected areas, nor capacity development for conservation in this remote archipelago.

This research builds on the principal investigator's decades-long collaboration with Seasea's Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC). The aim is to further support capacity development for conservation among local people, and increase collaboration with researchers and with local and national governments. A documentary made in collaboration with local people can help strengthen conservation education.

The new evolution garden at Utrecht University's Botanical Gardens shows the 500-million-year evolutionary path from green algae to modern vegetation. ''Based on our ongoing research on the co-evolution between plants and CO2, we propose to organise an interactive garden tour to highlight key physiological innovations in plant evolution. We pair this with online videos to illustrate their evolutionary innovations. The tour ends in a participatory experimental set-up where the public can talk to a plant to increase its CO2 growth environment,'' said Hugo de Boer.

This tour conveys knowledge about plant evolution and playfully engages the audience in scientific research.

GLOBE is a worldwide research programme for secondary school students from NASA, RIVM, KNMI and universities. Together with Utrecht University, GLOBE Netherlands, would like to realise a citizen science project with secondary school students on the Urban Heat Island Effect. "It is important that pupils feel involved in climate change. The Urban Heat Island Effect (the phenomenon where the temperature in an urban area is higher on average than in the surrounding rural area) is an interesting topic because it affects everyone, and pupils can easily take measurements. GLOBE's experience is that teachers are interested in new projects that require measurements and involve an active researcher using the data. In doing so, students will be more involved if they carry out their own research. The measurements we will do together with students will not only benefit their research, but also contribute to the knowledge of the university,'' said Martijn Kuller.