Report by Workshop Organizers Maria Oskarson and Björn Rönnerstrand, HEALTHDOX

Good research requires interactions and discussions with colleagues within the same field, and the workshop program within the ERA-NET Cofund Welfare State Futures Program is intended to offer exactly that. The NORFACE Welfare State Futures Thematic Workshop on “The Social Legitimacy of Our Future Welfare State” was held in Gothenburg, Sweden, February 22-24 2017, and was the second cross-project workshop arranged within the network. The workshop focus was on theories, methods and findings of recent studies on welfare relevant attitudes, opinions and preferences and gathered 46 participants from 10 of the projects within the Welfare State Futures Program.

“It was great to learn about the state-of-the-art in the welfare states future research field. I was particularly interested in learning  about several social experiments (carried out by the colleagues from Norway), the new approaches to health systems classification and the new method of democratic forums” Dimitri Gugushvili, WelfSOC | KU Leuven

The purpose of the workshop was double – on the one hand to support on-going research by providing an opportunity to present and discuss on-going work to colleagues in the welfare state community, and on the other hand to stimulate cross-project contacts and collaborations. I must say that I think the workshop fulfilled both purposes.

“The workshop was certainly helpful with regard to networking and provided ample opportunities for future cooperation” Henning Finseraas, GiWES | Institute for Social Research

With plenary presentations of the 8 on-going projects together with 23 paper presentations in 12 sessions the interactions and discussions were both stimulating and constructive. We believe we all got new insights in theories as well as methods and research designs, as well as ideas of how to proceed with our own work. The workshop also offered “mentoring sessions” for the participating younger scholars where they had the opportunity to more informally discuss matters such as publication strategies and career planning with more senior participants.

“This was my first WSF Thematic Workshop and I enjoyed hearing about all the innovative research of the other projects. The presentations were very relevant for my own research and it gave us the opportunity to present our work and exchange ideas with experts. In short, it was a great place to meet other researchers in one’s field in a very inspiring environment.” Jeanette AJ Renema, MIFARE | Radboud University

All in all we think the work shop turned out as well as we could have hoped for, thanks to the positive and constructive participants from all the different projects. With such participants, it is a privilege to organize a workshop!. A summary of papers presented and opinions on the workshop can be found at the WSF website.