The question of how researchers engage in public communication or political decision-making processes has gained unprecedented attention during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many scientists experienced hostile attitudes when going public. Threats and science hostility are no new phenomena, but gain more importance as science is increasingly embedded in public debates.

Introduction The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic led to a global and accelerated digitalisation of all education systems. This quickly revealed many inequalities in access to digital resources and lack of digital skills. What concrete impact has this had on learners and teachers worldwide? How can we address these inequalities in education?

Since the 1990s, health experts have anticipated that we would be hit by an influenza pandemic in the not-too-distant future (cf. Caduff 2015; Lakoff 2008; Weir, Mykhalovskiy 2010). While we may have thought of pandemic primarily in terms of Covid-19 over the past two years, influenza pandemics have long represented the paradigmatic case of pandemic preparedness planning.

***The COVID-19 pandemic experiences of many different countries have shown how an exceptional need for research evidence has led to rapid new deployments of scientists in advisory roles to aid policymakers in making evidence-informed decisions. (1) This has helped us learn how science advisors experience, and try to manage, the challenges of insufficient, evolving, and conflicting evidence as they work to inform public health decision-making.

Around this time last year we took a look back at the Elephants in the Lab of the Year and the article started with the words “2020 was different for all of us…”  Sadly that remains true for 2021. However, the debates and discussions within the scientific community have shifted slightly as the pandemic continued and thus, it is worth it once again to take a look back.

The digital shock as a starting point for a collaborative autoethnography The rapid and unavoidable shift towards emergency remote research, teaching and learning hit Germany at least as unexpectedly as it hit the vast majority of European Higher Education Institutions (HEI). While digitally based learning and teaching had continuously gained growing interest from policy-makers across Europe in the recent decade, the actual practical and

Texts on COVID-19 responses in education are plentiful: in particular, Germany’s school system and its lack of readiness for a pandemic, has been discussed frequently, also here at the institute. Our research interest and the focus of this blog post, however, lies in the tertiary part of the education system and possible answers to the challenges it faces.

2020 was different for all of us to say the least and only time will tell what this pandemic will mean for our futures – personally and professionally. Science has taken center stage during this year and thus, a lot of issues that were previously only discussed within the community have gained more attention from society. After an eventful year we would like to take a look back at the Elephants in the Lab of the Year.

Julia T Scho The pandemic has been a challenge for almost everybody. Cancelled conferences, field trips, experiments, suspended research, travel and visa restrictions, bad job prospects and no childcare, are just some of the problems  academics have faced since March. While the virus highlighted

International mobility is key for a career in academia (Bauder 2020, 2015; Geuna 2015; González Ramos and Bosch 2013; Ivancheva and Gourova 2011; OECD 2008; Bos et al. 2019). Early career researchers who did not study abroad, do not attend international conferences or go on field trips outside of their countries often find it difficult to reach the next step in obtaining tenure (Toader et al. 2016; Ackers and Oliver 2007;