Are you a teacher, researcher, student or in any other way interested in our collaboration? Every month the EWUU alliance organises an online session about research and education of the alliance. On the April 9th, the Lunch & Learn focusses on Buzzwords and Blind Spots.
Date: April 9 – 2026
Time: 12:15 – 13:00
Location: Online
Register Here
12:15 Welcome and introduction
12:20 Lunch & Learn Buzzwords and Blind Spots: Lessons Learned About Language from Citizen Participation Panels
Margret Franssen (EWUU institute 4 Preventive Health / Utrecht University) will share insights from ongoing work with citizen participation panels in Utrecht, Wageningen and Eindhoven. These panels bring together people with lived experience of worries and stress around money, work, housing and health, topics that research often focuses on, but who are not always included in shaping that research. Margret will be joined by a panel member and together they will briefly introduce how the panels are organized and what we learn from working together over time.
The focus will then shift to language: how research language can be hard to follow, feel distant or simply not fit people’s everyday lives, and how small changes in wording can make it easier to understand and relate to. Using a short “buzzword bingo” exercise, the session will make visible how common research terms are experienced in practice, and how they can either resonate or alienate. The session will include concrete examples from practice and invite reflection on how researchers can communicate in ways that better connect to people’s everyday realities.
12:50 Q&A
About the Speakers:
Research on health often concerns people in vulnerable circumstances – yet too often takes place without their involvement. Margret Franssen and colleagues Carlijn Kamphuis, Jantien van Berkel, Hilje van der Horst and Harm Veling are working to fundamentally shift this approach. Through so-called citizens panels, they bring together people facing challenges such as poverty, housing insecurity or chronic illness with researchers from i4PH.
The panel meets to advise researchers and also participates in other moments where members engage in conversation with researchers and others in the field. This ensures that research is better aligned with people’s lived realities.
“Much health research focuses on people in vulnerable circumstances, but still too often happens without their involvement.” – Margret Franssen