Our mission statement

With non-essential travel limited both due to the associated carbon cost and the risk of Coronavirus transmission, we stand at an impasse. Conferences may seem like a thing of the past. This challenge offers us a unique opportunity to rethink how we as a community wish to gather and discuss our common interests. With BRIDGES (Building Research InterDisciplinary Groups through E-conferences), we propose a solution that makes use of the available technology, so that we can meet as a community but without the restrictions of disciplinary or geographical boundaries.

The Social BRIDGES e-conference, hosted by the Institute of Psychology at the Bundeswehr University (University of the German Armed Forces) Munich, took place on 22-24 July 2020, bringing together over 40 speakers from 14 countries and a total of 38 research institutions who shared their findings on the influences of the COVID-19 pandemic on society, behaviour and psychology.

Social BRIDGES 2: Researchers in alignment

On 18-20 November 2020, the Institute of Psychology at the Universität der Bundeswehr München hosted the second virtual event in the Social BRIDGES series, welcoming renowned speakers and young researchers from all across the globe. The topic of this interdisciplinary forum was “Alignment in groups, network and teams”. The organizing committee led by Prof. Merle Fairhurst (Chair of Biological Psychology Lab at the Institute for Psychology), inspired by the positive feedback on the accessibility of the materials from the first Social BRIDGES event, chaired the second conference in the series following the same principle of worldwide open access.

Social BRIDGES 3: A glance into the future

The third Social BRIDGES e-conference on April 21 – 23, 2021, hosted by the Institute of Psychology at the Universität der Bundeswehr München, gathered renowned experts from 12 countries representing fields of research ranging from informatics and robotics to neurosciences and philosophy to discuss the near future of human-AI cooperation.

Social BRIDGES: How the COVID-19 pandemic has changed our touch behaviour

The impact of social distancing on human interactions and on our sense of touch was the topic of interest that gathered international researchers at the 4th interdisciplinary socialBRIDGES event on June 29, 2021, organized and hosted by the Institute of Psychology at the Universität der Bundeswehr München in co-operation with the International Association for Study on Affective Touch (IASAT).