The three Working Groups of FENS came together for a lively and engaging two-day World-café style workshop at Wageningen University, Netherlands on April 17^th and 18^th 2023.

Following the success of the World-café workshop at the IUNS-ICN in Tokyo in December 2022, the World café format was also chosen for this workshop as it encourages open dialogue and promotes the exchange of ideas in a relaxed and informal setting. The workshop was divided into several tables of small group discussions, with each table focusing on a different aspect of the working group’s research topics around improving nutrition science standards and science communication.

One of the key successes of the workshop was the level of engagement and enthusiasm among the participants.  The three Working Groups were formed shortly after the last FENS conference in 2019. Due to the pandemic, the Working Groups have worked exclusively online until this workshop. All the participants valued the ability to come together to work within their groups and to interact with the other working groups.  The small group format allowed everyone to have a voice and to contribute their ideas and experiences. Participants reported feeling inspired by the discussions, with many commenting on how valuable it was to hear perspectives from people outside their working group, or outside their own field. All the Working Groups have early career members and the experience was especially rewarding to them.

Working Group 3 has recently published the guidelines for writing and reviewing press releases that they developed, and exploring how to maximise uptake of these guidelines and how to assess their impact was one of the topics discussed during the workshop.

We were also honoured to be joined by two recent graduates of Wageningen University, Eline Baltussen and Billy van Zoomeren, to open our workshop with a joint presentation based on the commonalities between their two thesis topics, titled “ Integrating Resilience: towards a holistic concept of Health”.

The outcomes of this workshop will contribute to the research and the final results of the Working Groups, which will be presented as part of the Presidential symposium at the next FENS conference in Belgrade, Serbia in November. To read more on the FENS symposium and other highlights from the programme visit https://fens2023.org/scientific-committee-organized-simposiums/. If you would like to take part in FENS 2023, registration and abstract submission are open.