From August 30^th to September 1^st 2023, the Tabloo visitor center in Dessel, Belgium, played host to the much-anticipated RICOMET conference on social science and humanities research in ionising radiation, featuring a lot of RadoNorm’s research. This gathering of more than 100 social science researchers and key stakeholders was dedicated to advancing knowledge and fostering discussions on ionising radiation’s societal, ethical and socio-technical aspects.

The conference featured a dedicated session on social science and humanities research on Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORM), underlining RadoNorm’s pivotal role in this domain. Another session was dedicated to exploring social science and humanities research on radon. A particularly insightful half-day workshop addressed the complexities surrounding NORM in geothermal installations. In-depth discussions delved into the challenges associated with stakeholder engagement and public communication in this sphere, shedding light on crucial issues for the industry. Moreover, the coordinator of RadoNorm, Ulrike Kulka and WP6 leader, Tanja Perko, represented RadoNorm as a great transdisciplinary project at the event “Bridging social science and humanities (SSH) and natural science perspectives in research and innovation: Contributions, experiences, challenges and lessons learned from SSH in different projects”, moderated by Seifallah Ben Hadj Hassine from European Commission and Yevgeniya Tomkiv from the SHARE platform.

Notably, RadoNorm’s talented Early Career researchers received well-deserved recognition at RICOMET. Melisa Muric (SCK CEN and University of Antwerp) was honored for her presentation on the significance of data cleaning in survey research, earning the award for Methodological approach. Nazanin Love (SCK CEN and Hasselt University) garnered praise for her presentation on stakeholder perceptions regarding the use of NORM in concrete production, ultimately winning the award for societal impact. These accomplishments underscore the invaluable contributions made by RadoNorm researchers to the field of ionising radiation research.

RadoNorm presentations, posters and sessions can be found on www.ricomet.eu.

SHARE president Susan Molyneux-Hodgson with the SHARE-award winners Nazanin Love (left) and Melisa Muric (2nd left).