What does it mean to be a care-full scholar?
Caring in your research, your work, and your everyday choices isn’t just a personal ethic — it’s a path to more just, sustainable, and nature-connected futures.
This spring, next to the coast of the Wadden Sea in the Netherlands, a group of emerging researchers (PhD students from the University of Groningen) explored just that during a workshop co-hosted by DAISY. The session spotlighted how care — when embedded in scholarship and practice — can nurture real transformation.
Alex Franklin, DAISY’s Coordinator, introduced the evolving Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) care-full scholarship, originally developed by the project RECOMS, and being further advanced by two Horizon Europe projects PLANET4B and DAISY (the latter co-coordinated by GreenFormation). This approach invites researchers and professionals to reflect on how care can inform their relationships with biodiversity, people, and policy — and how to turn that care into action. The presentation was followed by small-group discussions facilitated also by GreenFormation member.
Within DAISY, this course will be expanded to build response-ability: the ability to respond with care. This means equipping changemakers with tools and mixes of tools to spark transformation — from policy levers like taxes, to creative and participatory methods, to behavioural nudges.
Because caring is not soft — it’s strategic. And it’s essential for transformative change.
