Future Biodiversity: How can we rewrite its story

Why give up a week of your valuable time to join us in Ireland?

Location

This will be a truly unique event in an amazing location: The Burren National Park, County Clare, Ireland, internationally famous for its karst landscape and diverse flora – which will be at its best in June. 

Our Approach

Rather than take a traditional conference format and then try to inject discussion into it – which never succeeds – we use a purpose-built design for our workshops.  The events are built around sessions and activities designed to stimulate discourse and to enhance the interactions between people who start out as strangers.  And we throw away all the things about conferences that deter open discussion.  No airless rooms under artificial light! No parallel rows of chairs! No PowerPoint! No formal presentations. Walking every afternoon. An opportunity to: exchange ideas; to pull apart contentious issues; to set challenges and goals ; to develop more effective collaborations within the international community; to build greater camaraderie among researchers; and to help our emerging researchers to more rapidly take leading roles.

Quality Interactions

This workshop, by deliberately stimulating discussion among a small group of scientists (a maximum of just 27 people), will offer you opportunities that traditional conferences and workshops have never given you!  You will have the time and the opportunity to think, to discuss, to challenge one another (in a good-spirited, safe way), and together to reach conclusions about the best ways forward.  You will do this with some of the world’s top ecologists and, critically, with a strong contingent of our best young scientists.  You will participate (every attendee will be given a specific role), often in very unusual ways.  You will work hard but you will have a great amount of fun!  Everyone – we hope – will end up as a co-author on at least one scientific paper, a policy statement, podcast or a symposium proposal.  This will be like no other workshop that you have ever attended!