Dear Action participants,
Once again, here’s wishing a warm welcome aboard to all on the COST Action LeverAge network. As we approach the end of the first quarter (Q1) of the first grant period (GP), January 2024, the following is to keep you abreast of essential information and developments related to the Action.
Action Network Growth & Profile
Our Action network has burgeoned over the last few months, including 121 participants from 100 institutions as of this writing. Our Action network is pan-European and spans the globe, including one specific organization, Eurofound, and the following 48 countries:
Albania, Algeria, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Brazil, Bulgaria, China, Croatia, Cyprus, Czechia, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Mexico, Moldova, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tunisia, Turkey, the UAE, the UK, Ukraine, and the US.
67% of our Action participants are women and 33% are young researchers and innovators under the age of 40. We have an excellent balance of scientists (87%) and practitioners (13%). Although most of the scientists in our Action network are I/O psychologists or HRM/OB scholars, we are also highly interdisciplinary, with expertise from participants in related fields such as social psychology, cognitive/neuropsychology, developmental psychology, occupational health, human factors, sociology, and economics.
Success Stories
Congratulations to Profs. Ulrike Fasbender from the University of Hohenheim in Germany (WG 3), Michela Vignoli from the University of Trento in Italy (WG 2 & 3), Libby Drury from the University of London in the UK (WG 3 & 4), Bernadeta Gostautaite from ISM University of Management and Economics in Lithuania (WG 2 & 4), and Anita Keller from the University of Groningen in Netherlands for winning a coveted Volkswagen Foundation grant worth 1,600,000 (1.6M) Euros on the topic of age-diverse friendship!
New Collaborations
Congratulations to Profs. Juergen Deller from Goinger Kreis and the Leuphana University of Lüneburg in Germany (WG 1 & 5), Alexandra Weilhartner from ÖSB Consulting GmbH & ÖSB Socialinnovation gGmbH & itworks Personalservice gGmbH in Austria (WG 2 & 4), Luciana Mourao (WG 3 & 5) and Juliana Seidl (WG 3 & 5) from UNIVERSO in Brazil, Eva Derous from Ghent University in Belgium (WG 3 & 5), Hila Axelrad from Reichman University in Israel (WG 1 & 5), Michela Vignoli from the University of Trento in Italy (WG 2 & 3), Eduardo Oliveira from the University of Porto in Portugal (WG 1 & 5), Sibel Kiran (WG 1 & 2) and Justin Marcus (WG 3 & 4) from Koç University in Turkey, and Beatrice I.J.M. Van der Heijden from Radboud University in Netherlands (WG 2 & 5), who along with many other colleagues outside the Action network, have formed a multinational collaboration involving the Late Life Workplace Index (LLWI)! The LLWI is the most comprehensive scale in the extant literature on psychological and managerial aspects of work and aging. For more information on the LLWI, please see here.
Congratulations to Profs. Susanne Scheibe (WG 2 & 4), Kyriaki Fousiani (WG 3), and Claudia Kitz from the University of Groningen in Netherlands and Raphael Eppler-Hattab from the University of Haifa in Israel (WG 1 & 3) for starting a new international collaboration on measuring and examining the age-friendliness of employers in the DACH region during and after the COVID-19 pandemic!
Working Group (WG) Meetings
As you doubtless have heard from your Working Group (WG) leaders by now, the first online WG meetings are underway. As of this writing, WG 2 has held its first online meeting and the other WGs are expected to hold theirs in the weeks ahead.
As the dates for this GP’s face-to-face WG meetings get confirmed, during the respective WG first online meetings, you will begin to receive invitations via e-COST to attend said face-to-face WG meetings. A hybrid option will be provided to accommodate those rare exceptions in individual cases where there may be extremely extenuating circumstances (i.e., force majeure). The focus of these WG meetings will be on advancing scientific excellence and societal impact with regard to the respective WG aims (please see https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA22120/ for the Action MoU).
For participants from COST Full/Cooperating/Partner Members (https://www.cost.eu/about/members/) and Near Neighbor Countries (https://www.cost.eu/about/strategy/cost-global-networking/), the Action will only fund participation to maximally 1 face-to-face WG meeting per participant per year but you are free to attend more than 1 WG meeting per year if you can find other sources of funding to do so. For participants from all other countries, the Action will only fund participation to maximally 1 face-to-face WG meeting in the lifetime of the Action but you are free to attend more if you can find other sources of funding to do so. For more details on travel funding to WG meetings, please see pages 82-89 of the following: https://www.cost.eu/uploads/2023/11/COST-094-21-Annotated-Rules-for-COST-Actions-Level-C-V1.4-Final-.pdf
Action Grant Calls
The Action MC is currently voting on the Action grant awarding criteria. If you are an MC member and have not yet voted, please feel free to do so at your earliest convenience and via the link in the email you would have received via e-COST regarding this matter. Voting will end on January 30th and the first grant call for this GP will then be issued via email to all on January 31st, including for Short Term Scientific Missions, ITC Conference, and Dissemination Conference grants. So please look toward receiving this email from me on the first grant call next week where I will share specific details regarding the grant application process and criteria.
For more details on these grant awards, please see pages 93-100 of the following: https://www.cost.eu/uploads/2023/11/COST-094-21-Annotated-Rules-for-COST-Actions-Level-C-V1.4-Final-.pdf
Share your Successes & New Collaborations
Do you have a newly accepted scientific publication related to work and aging?
Did you recently receive grant funding for a project related to work and aging?
Have you formed a new research collaboration with other COST Action LeverAge participants?
Please do not hesitate to email us of your recently accepted scientific publications, research funding, or new research collaborations formed with fellow Action participants so that we may share your success stories and/or scholarly endeavors with the Action network in future editions of this Action newsletter. This will help stimulate interest in your research and raise the profile of our COST Action.
You may direct all information related to success stories and new collaborations to the Grant Holder Manager, Ms. Noura Al Mursi nmursi23@ku.edu.tr
Action Participants Needed
We are currently looking for qualified students/scientists/practitioners to join our Action network from the following 15 countries:
Armenia, Azerbaijan, Egypt, the Faroe Islands, Georgia, Jordan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Libya, Luxembourg, Malta, Montenegro, Morocco, Palestine, and Syria. Interested participants from any of these 15 countries should have demonstrable pedagogical/scholarly/practical experience in one of the following fields: I/O psychology, HRM/OB, social psychology, cognitive/neuropsychology, developmental psychology, occupational health, human factors, sociology, or economics. If you know of any such person, please do not hesitate to email me.
Acknowledgement of Action support
If a research project you are working on is eventually published and was presented at an ITC or Dissemination conference that you attended with Action funding OR was worked on during the course of a Short Term Scientific Mission that the Action funded OR was workshopped at an Action-funded workshop or Training School OR was presented, worked on, or otherwise discussed at length at an Action-funded Working Group meeting, please insert the following line: “This publication is based upon work from COST Action CA22120, LeverAge, supported by COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology).”
If you acknowledge Action funding, please do your best to make the publication (or a preprint of the publication) available via open access, and to the extent that your publishing contract allows.
Warm Regards,
The COST Action LeverAge Leadership Team