On July 5, 2024, a Memorandum of Understanding between the United Nations and Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań (AMU), was signed in Warsaw. The memorandum concerns a five-year cooperation between AMU and the UN in the humanities and social sciences to strengthen the UN's research activities in the field of behavioural sciences, significantly supported by the UN at the moment.
AMU's educational and research activities related to communications, media, security, political science, psychology and cognitive science, and international relations will partner to closely cooperate and support the International Hub on Behavioural Insights to Counter Terrorism in Doha (UN).
The memorandum was signed in the presence of Polish President Andrzej Duda and His Highness the Emir of Qatar, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. The behavioural sciences centre is based in Qatar and works with the Qatari government.
The memorandum includes terms on understanding and analyzing human behaviour, security, communication, terrorism or combating exclusion - content closely related to behavioural science issues. AMU's cooperation with the UN declared in the memorandum includes:
- Research and working group funding, joint research projects and knowledge exchange initiatives.
- Creating a research centre to support the development of knowledge and research in the behavioural sciences.
- Allowing employees and students to participate in exchanges and visits to UN centres involved in the development of knowledge and skills in the behavioural sciences.
In addition, the memorandum envisions drawing on the expertise of researchers from the AMU Faculty of Political Science and Journalism and focusing on behavioural sciences, communication and media, political sciences, international relations and their connections to counterterrorism and International security. This cooperation may also include joint publications and workshops.
The development of behavioural sciences, a crucial space for the BI Hub to exploit in the development of awareness and knowledge in understanding human behaviour, also results in the UN's sponsorship of a postgraduate course in Behavioral Analysis and Lie Detection, whose program is being implemented at the AMU Faculty of Political Science and Journalism.
AMU will be the only university in Poland and in this part of Europe to cooperate so directly with the UN. AMU was represented by Vice-Rector, Prof. Michal Banaszak, Prof. Anna Potyrała and Malgorzata Tadeusz-Ciesielczyk, PhD
