CROP Annual Report 2017
This report presents CROP's activities for the period January - December 2017 and reflects upon what has been achieved within the framework of institutional strategic priorities and objectives.
In 2017, CROP's Scientific Committee meeting took place at the headquarters of ISSC/UNESCO in Paris with combined online/on-site participation of committee members, ISSC and CROP Secretariat representatives and special invitees. It was a good opportunity to deal with the usual scientific agenda as well as to discuss the long-term opportunities opened by the merger decision between the ISSC and ICSU.
The timing of the Scientific Committee meeting was planned so that it would precede a CROP-UNESCO workshop on the “Politics of inclusion" held at the UNESCO headquarters (see article in this Report). The output from this workshop will include a peer-reviewed book and a series of follow-up activities aiming to impact on society and decision-making processes through the Management of Social Transformations (MOST) Programme and CROP's own network (CROPNet). This long-standing collaboration will continue next year with a series of events, including a joint panel at the World Social Science Forum (WSSF) 2018 that will take place in Fukuoka, Japan.
CROP co-organised four workshops in 2017 that will feed into the pipeline of high quality peer-reviewed books to enlarge our collection of free and open access publications and provide substance to our communication strategy. All CROP events contribute to the strategic expansion of our network. A particular example in 2017 was the organisation of a workshop on inequality and poverty in socialist and post-socialist countries. With the valuable collaboration of our late friend and colleague, Bob Deacon, this workshop took place in St Petersburg in June 2017 and will result in a book that reflects the state of the art and extends the frontiers of the debate on this relevant topic.
Our network is growing at a pace that will make it necessary to re-think the possibilities of continuing this level of expansion in the future. We have now surpassed 1600 active researchers in our network (an increase of 28% over the previous year), which increases the pressure on the Secretariat to fulfil the demands and expectations of its global membership while maintaining current activities and future plans.
