Under the umbrella of the DIID there is not only room for scientists from different disciplines, but also for cooperation partners from practice. As carriers of practical knowledge, our cooperation partners are an important part of DIID’s inter- and transdisciplinary research approach. If you would also like to become a cooperation partner, please contact our coordinator.
The AWO Kreisverband Bielefeld e.V. is one of the major providers of social services for children, young people, adults and the elderly. The practical partnership with the DIID enables us to take an external, scientific look at our practice-oriented approach to digitization in the social space. This results in potential improvements to our existing offerings and innovative ideas from the scientific community that we can implement in practice.
BUND Landesverband NRW e.V. was founded in 1976. By law, it is responsible for special participation and legal action in planning procedures that affect nature and the landscape. The executive committee works on a purely honorary basis, as do the members of the specialist working groups. A team of about ten full-time employees supports the work of the state association and takes care of the members and supporters. All of this is only possible in a participatory and increasingly digital way. As a practical partner of the DIID, we contribute the implementation experience and requirements of a civil society organization that we have acquired over a wide area.
Liquid Democracy e.V. has been working on practical solutions and innovative concepts for digital democracy since 2009. The DIID and its researchers are pioneers in their field with their focus on researching digital participation and deliberation. The cooperation as a practice partner with the DIID allows us to bring the latest scientific findings and the practical implementation of digital democracy closer together.
Make.org is a neutral and independent civic tech organization for citizen participation. The specially developed participation platforms enable highly scalable citizen participation through optimized user interfaces in order to change society sustainably. Make.org also has many years of expertise in (online) mobilization to enable extensive and diverse participation. The cooperation with DIID helps us to further develop our own analytical competence and to test new approaches.
The city of Moers is located on the lower Lower Rhine at the western edge of the Ruhr region and is the largest city in the district of Wesel with a population of around 104,000. Since 2014, Moers has been a practice partner in the Research College Online Participation of the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf (on the board since 2019) and has since conducted various (joint) participation processes (see DIID Monitor Online Participation).
The Open.NRW office, based in the NRW Digital Ministry, is the central point of contact for open government in North Rhine-Westphalia. We create concrete offerings such as the central citizen participation portal Beteiligung.NRW to advance the topics of participation, transparency and collaboration. For us, the partnership with DIID is an important stimulus for the further expansion of our Open.NRW activities.
polidia has over a decade of practical experience in the field of (digital) participation. In addition to the in-house participation platform DIALOG BOX, polidia supports its clients in all services related to participation processes – from process design to conception, activation, implementation of events and moderation to evaluation – and ensures the political connectivity of results.
As a spin-off of the TU Darmstadt, research & knowledge exchange are in the DNA of wer|denkt|was. In cooperation with various research institutions, the transfer of current research results to the application fields of digital citizen participation is promoted and the dialog with science is cultivated. wer|denkt|was supports research partners with research data and access as well as practical expertise.
With the adoption of the Guidelines for Citizen Participation, the city of Wuppertal has firmly anchored participation as a cross-sectional task in the administration. In exchange with scientific partners, citizen participation in the municipality can be continuously developed and new research findings can be taken into account. Being able to incorporate practical experience and needs at the same time makes the partnership with DIID all the more valuable for the city of Wuppertal.
Zebralog is an agency for public participation. As pioneers of digital participation, we have developed the Dialogzentrale, a platform that is now used by many municipalities as a participation portal. In order to continuously improve our developments, the exchange with science is elementary. That’s why we particularly appreciate the good and long-standing collaboration with the DIID.
Transdisciplinary Research at DIID
With practice, for practice – that is what transdisciplinary research means to us. In the past, DIID researchers have successfully cooperated with partners from practice in numerous research projects. A selection of projects that DIID has carried out together with cooperation partners from practice can be found here: