Séminaire ReSIC 2025-26 - The role of science communication in pandemic preparedness and response

For some years now they have been exploring how communication of science and scientific expertise is part of evidence-informed policymaking during health crises, and how discussions about pandemic policy and science in the public sphere also have shaped the political process. 

The study is based on 70 semi-structured interviews (with public servants, scientists, professional communicators, journalists and other related knowledge backgrounds), and analysis of many documents produced by pandemic advisory boards, in order to discover which barriers and facilitators exist in the process of policymaking as part of pandemic preparedness and response. Besides this, a corpus of news articles published during the COVID-19 pandemic and containing mentions of Belgian scientific expertise in French and Dutch language print media, was analysed in collaboration with Sébastien De Valeriola. As the end of the project gets closer, they will share some recommendations for communication practices during future health crises, and open a more general discussion to our role as scientists in policy advice: what does it take and how do you see yourselves sharing your expertise?

Ingrid van Marion has a PhD in Neurosciences and works as a researcher and trainer in science communication at ULB. Her research interests include knowledge brokering, evidence-informed policy-making and patient participation. She is also co-founder of BE.Scicomm, the association of professionals, trainers/educators, and researchers in that field in Belgium.

David Domingo is a researcher in journalism, with a focus on the relationship between news producers, their sources and their publics in the digital environment.

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