The Agora For
a © are conceived of as a participative exercise Associating Governmental Organizations, Researchers and Advocacy (AGORA) rooted in the substantive collaboration between the project’s 4 Academic and 4 non-Academic partners. The trilateral dialogue between researchers, practitioners and civil society is an on-going process which will provide the research community with rapid and targeted feedback from the policy actors working in their field of inquiry and make policy implications drawn from recent research more tangible.
This rigorously framed method includes three steps:
AGORA© Background Notes
Discussions at AGORA Fora are systematically based on previously circulated standardised research and/or technical background notes respectively drafted by academics or policy-makers and experts. Research background notes entail a summary of original research, a brief assessment outlining the areas for policy improvements and a short list of policy suggestions. Technical background notes entail a summary of the policy environments evolution, an assessment of key policy concerns, and a list of the perceived prevalent policy obstacles as well as their implied research questions
AGORA© Roundtables
These thematic modules include a limited and balanced number of participants hailing from all three participating communities – i.e. research, policy-making and advocacy. Each roundtable is introduced by the author of the related background notes in view of providing subsequent discussions with a common reference frame. Said open-ended discussions are to last about one hour and a half and involve comments/suggestions/questions from any of the roundtable’s 15 participants. The result of these discussions are then summarised and presented at a plenary session by the session’s rapporteur hailing from civil society.
AGORA© Outcomes
Depending on whether one is engaged in an ‘instigation’ or a ‘dissemination’ exercise, outcomes are respectively either ‘Research Briefs’ or ‘Policy Briefs’. Research briefs are to help with the fine-tuning of the projects scientific agenda by integrating practitioners insights at the design stage of the research. Policy briefs are documents for the communication of scientifically informed policy recommendations. Both types of briefs are short standardised documents produced and disseminated by WP5. Moreover, Forum meetings might also generate video material in the form of short online documentaries.
Read more on the official Agora website