The Five Senses of this Year’s Researchers’ Night
The date of the science-popularisation event Researchers’ Night falls on the last Friday in September, namely September 30th, 2022. Organisers have revealed the theme of the event that will define the content of the activities presented by the researchers involved. Get all your senses ready, as you are going to need them.
The date of Researchers’ Night is by no means a secret, as the event falls on last September Fridays throughout Europe. What is a surprise for the visitors is the theme. Thisyear’s theme is Through All Senses. “It’s the Czech specialty. We try to come up with a newtheme every year in order for the scientist to think about their scientific discipline fromvarious angles,” says Petra Halíková, spokesperson of the Technical University of Ostrava,adding: “The scientists involved can vary every year, since the theme may not be suitable toeveryone, which is perfectly appropriate. They may participate the following year, because itcan match their professional profile. As a result, the event is more diverse, and visitors canget to know new scientists and their activities.”
The theme will deal with the traditional five senses (smell, hearing, sight, taste, touch) fromthe perspective of St Thomas Aquinas or Aristotle, among others. “We can come across thestatement that the fundamental division of the five senses is no longer valid, as flora andfauna extend the scale considerably. We also address the sixth sense, but also the sense asan ability to perceive. In short, we believe that the topic opens doors to all scientificdisciplines and that the variety of interpretations will be attractive to the audiences,” saysLucie Fremrová, spokesperson of the University of Ostrava.
The new theme goes hand in hand with new visuals. “It was essential for us to follow up onthe basic graphic features and visuals from the previous year. We have created a unifiedvisual style to enable us to use similar graphic features also in the coming years. What is ourintention is for our audiences to associate the graphic features with the Researchers’ Nightapproaching,” says Jitřenka Navrátilová, manager of the national co-ordinator. Thefundamental range of colours is kept; dark background that evokes night, or green colour,occurring frequently in the nature and often associated with research into natural sciencesand the universe. Working with vivid bitmap illustrations, we follow the latest trends in̈́graphic design.
A group of two universities of Ostrava (namely, the University of Ostrava and the VŠBTechnical University of Ostrava) has co-ordinated the event for the fifth time. Further, morethan 20 universities and more than 40 research institutions, science centres, observatoriesand other facilities are participating in the event, which is taking place in more than 100spots around Czechia.
Researchers’ Night was initiated by the European Commission in 2005 and its mission is toshow that science is not boring, but on the contrary is a source of interesting and fascinatingphenomena. One day a year, hundreds of institutions, among them universities, researchand development centres, science centres, and other places, open and hold free guidedtours, popular education presentations, workshops, experiments, science shows, musicperformances, amongst others. The aim of the Researchers’ Night is to dispel myths aboutscientists as people locked in laboratories and to show the general public that they are“ordinary people” who do work beneficial to each of us, they can present it in an engagingway, and they can also have a good time.
Jitřenka Navrátilová
Manager of the national coordinator of the Researchers’ Night
koordinator@nocvedcu.cz / +420 731 068 263