The vision of FOSTER is to build a foundation from which a new Knowledge and Innovation System (KIS) for Europe’s food system can emerge. The current structure is insufficient to address the emerging challenges of nourishing people in a healthy and sustainable way. Key objective is to gain insights into how it can be built to be more inclusive and better governed. 

FOSTER shall help to transform Europe’s food system outcomes and will achieve this by: 

• building a FOSTER Platform including food system-state of the art knowledge, foresight by semi-automated Horizon scanning, trend and threats-analysis and new multi-dimensional scenarios of EU food systems to 2040; 
• implementing the FOSTER Academy – including four Summer Schools – for integrating food system-related disciplines and citizen science to enhance food system understanding across the ERA; 
• initiating and assessing a co-creation and co-learning process within six national resp. regional Citizen Driven Initiatives (CDIs), in which new knowledge, strategies and Action Research Agendas are gained; 
• scaling out and deep CDIs solutions and approaches to other territorial contexts; 
• studying different R&I mechanisms of policy support for mission-oriented R&I policy for food systems transformation, and analysing and ground-proofing them in each CDI; 
• strengthening science-policy interfaces by co-learning processes with external experts and developing recommendations for food systems R&I policies tailored to different geographies and sectors; 
• identifying the trigger points to help ‘unlock’ system lock-ins and support further dynamics towards system transformation; 
• and applying reflective monitoring on all FOSTER’s co-learning activities to develop insights into how the KIS can be broadened from an agricultural-KIS to a food system-KIS.
  

To inspire adoption of FOSTER learnings, over 20 workshops and a final conference will be conducted; scientific position papers and policy briefs will be widely communicated. 

Between 16th - 19th of July, Eye of Europe consortium partners AIT and Fraunhofer ISI attended the 2024 conference by the European Association for the Study of Science and Technology (EASST) and the Society for Social Studies of Science (4S).

The Eye of Europe (EoE) project has reached an important milestone: Using an interactive approach, the members of the consortium came up with eleven exciting topics that will be addressed in Foresight Workshops with experts, citizens, entrepreneurs, scientists, policymakers, journalists and many other stakeholder groups within the coming 16 months. In the workshops, Eye of Europe partners will apply both established and novel Foresight approaches to dive deep into topics of common interest to stakeholders across the European Research Area. These workshops will take place in cities such as Madrid, Prague, Berlin, Bucharest, Paris and Thessaloniki, as well as online.

The final set of topics for EoE pilot workshops is as follows:

• Democracy – a long term Project: This online workshop will gather domain experts to shed light on a large spectrum of future challenges to democracy.
• The Knowledge of our Civilisation(s) in 2040: In this two-day Berlin based workshop participants with diverse domain expertise will explore the future of knowledge in human civilisation in the face of multiple drivers of change.
• European Industrial Decarbonisation: This two-day workshop in Madrid will gather diverse stakeholders to debate alternative pathways of industrial decarbonisation for Europe in the face of different geopolitical scenarios.
• Emotion Ecosystems: This Bucharest based two-day workshop will investigate the impact of technologies like affective computing and brain-machine interface on individuals and collectives with different stakeholder groups.
• Democracy and Technology: In this workshop citizens in Prague will jointly reflect on democratic approaches to risks connected with new technologies and their impacts on various societal groups.
• Aging and Assisted Living Technologies: This workshop in Berlin with international research and policy actors is dedicated to future ways of integrating smart and digital technologies into assisted living and care for older adults.
• Fashion Futures: In two Thessaloniki based workshops citizens and domain experts will explore the future of sustainable fashion in interaction with values and identities both with a regional and international perspective.
• Public Policy and Change of Diets: In this workshop in Paris a diverse group of citizens will reflect on policy inroads into future pathways towards healthy and sustainable diets.
• Science and Conflicts: In this online workshop, experts and actors of the science system will jointly dive into possible implications of growing geopolitical tensions for science.
• Future of Knowledge and Emotions: This futures survey will provide input for the two interrelated topics the future of knowledge and the future of emotion ecosystems that will feed the respective workshops.
  
  
  These Eye of Europe Foresight pilot workshops have a twofold purpose.
  
  First of all, the workshops serve the project’s aspirations expressed by Eye of Europe coordinator, Radu Gheorghiu, namely to nurture the “vibrant community of individuals engaging in a conversation about our collective future” and to fuel the “continuous loop of dialogue, learning and inspiration”.
  
  Secondly, by addressing topics of common interest to R&I actors across ERA and major R&I challenges, they aim to mobilise collective anticipatory intelligence. In particular, we hope to shed light on the evolution of research and innovation and its contribution to a wide range of important future questions.
  
  How did the team arrive at these topics?
  
  The topic generation process involved three major elements:
  
• Analysis of R&I strategy documents from a range of different EU countries
• interviews with R&I actors from different positions in ERA’s research and innovation ecosystem,
• and interactive discourse among EoE partner organisations.
  
  It was important to the topic identification team, led by Pier Francesco Moretti from CNR - Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche in Italy, not to remain at the surface of the challenges that are expressed in key documents but to dive deeper into underlying root causes and dynamics. So when in the document analysis, topics like energy, artificial intelligence, digitalisation, health and security emerged at top positions, we strived to identify crosscutting underlying aspects.