April 2020 - launch of the World Pandemic Research Network (WPRN)

The first real-time and global directory of research & research resources on the societal and human impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic.

While the world is facing a major health challenge, the Natural and Life Sciences are mobilizing to find vaccines and remedies. At the same time, and without further ado, Social Sciences and Humanities are coming to the forefront to help our societies face the wave of socio-economic crisis that will ensue. This unprecedented mobilization needs new resources, formats, and reflexivity to learn from our successes and our mistakes in view of the subsequent crises. The World Pandemic Research Network will help to meet these needs through its searchable platform www.wprn.org.

As the first real-time directory of research projects and research resources at the international level, WPRN constitutes an innovation at the service of the global community of researchers in the humanities and social sciences. It will allow everyone to save their resources (research projects, calls for proposals, surveys, seminars, etc.) but also to know who does what and where, and to get in touch with the participants concerned.

Allowing citing the work in progress, to share data, questionnaires, hypotheses in real time while maintaining the system of authorship and responsibility, the WPRN platform seeks to contribute to acceleration of research and emergence of new intersectoral research formats.

WPRN is a non-profit academic resource, supported by scientific societies, networks and institutions worldwide. Initiated by the Institute for Advanced Studies in Paris, which coordinates it with the support of its international scientific council, WPRN is supported by more than 100 academic institutions in more than 60 countries, as well as by the NETIAS, UBIAS, EASSH, UAI, and IPSP.