PROFILE: EUPRERA

Founded in 1959 as “CERP Education & Research”, in 2000 it turned to “EUPRERA”: European Public Relations Education and Research Association. EUPRERA is an autonomous organisation that aims at stimulating and promoting innovative knowledge and practices of public relations education and research in Europe. EUPRERA cooperates with the most prominent PR associations, scientific journals and practitioners coming from different countries.

EUPRERA has the following objectives at the European level:

• Collecting, communicating and exchanging of innovative Public Relations research.
• Encouraging innovative research within the field of Public Relations.
• Encouraging innovative Public Relations education models in the different countries in order to connect this type of education with the world of practice.
• Encouraging the development of innovative Public Relations methods as well as their promotion and dissemination.

Members

The academic staff and researchers constitute the explicit public group of the association. However, it is equally essential for any practitioner who wants to keep informed about the most recent developments regarding fundamental and applied research and about the new trends in the educational field.

Activities

EUPRERA members continuously have the opportunity to submit new research and education projects. The project leaders create, innovate, lead and participate in projects and invite new members to join propose new projects. In order to circulate new methodologies and research results, every year EUPRERA organizes its Annual Congress, every year in cooperation with a renowned university in Europe. Authors have the opportunity to see their papers published in EUPRERA Congress Book and Journal of Communication Management. Moreover, at the congress, prizes are awarded: “EUPRERA Best Paper Award”, "EUPRERA Best Reviewer Award", “EUPRERA Master Award”, “EUPRERA PhD Award”. The winners not only promote themselves and their institutions but their work celebrates the excellence and innovation in learning and research that Euprera stands for.

Thematic field

Public Affairs and Lobbying

Public affairs is a clearly identified communication specialism practiced by increasing numbers of professionals across Europe. It if frequently associated with lobbying, which is an important sub-function of public affairs. But modern public affairs is centred on the wider management of relationships, organising campaigns and the building of discursive communities across a range of stakeholder networks in order to influence any issue that may have legislative or regulatory policy implications. As such EUPRERA is a natural home for building this network.

However, academic PR has failed to fully assert a leading role in public affairs research, and many studies of PA and lobbying in Europe are often produced by scholars from other fields who have not sought to build theory or draw out implications specifically for PR in their work.

Nonetheless, there are a good number of scholars across Europe who have been working on projects relevant to this field. No other international academic association in the field of PR has a network or special group focused on public affairs. So, the aim is to build the first active academic network of PR scholars interested in public affairs within EUPRERA.

Goals of the network

• To foster collaborative working between members of the network.
• To facilitate sustainable collaboration between members that will lead to the submission of funding bids.
• To re-integrate public affairs as a subject that sits within the academic field of PR.
• To facilitate a forum for debate and exchange on the future of public affairs scholarship and practice in Europe.
• To co-ordinate the outputs of network collaborations into new academic publications.
• To proactively build relationships with practitioner communities for research impact and knowledge transfer.

Network leader

• Dr Scott Davidson, University of Leicester, UK

Network members

• Øyvind Ihlen, University of Oslo, Norway
• Melissa Dodd, University of Central Florida, USA
• Tor Bang, BI Norwegian Business School, Norway
• Sarah Roberts-Bowman, University of the Arts London, UK
• Chiara Valentini, Aarhus University, Denmark
• Christian Fieseler, BI Norwegian Business School, Norway
• Elina Melgin, ProCom, Finnish Association of Communication Professionals, Finland
• Astrid Berg, Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Netherlands
• Denisa Hejlova, Charles University, Czech Republic
• Lucile Desmoulins ,UPEM  Université Paris-Est Marne-la-Vallée, France
• Susana Carvalho, Instituto Superior de Novas Profissões, Portugal