In this article we introduce the Schumpeterian growth paradigm, where growth results from innovations that render previous innovations obsolete. We show how this paradigm can be used to elucidate enigmas in recent growth history, such as the growth take-off, secular stagnation, and the middle-income trap. We then illustrate how the Schumpeterian paradigm can be tested using rich micro data, focusing on the relationship between product market competition and innovation-led growth. Finally, we use the paradigm to question some common wisdoms on growth policymaking.

The quantitative understanding of processes operating in the earth system has advanced significantly over the last few decades. This has led to the realization that a close interaction between deep earth and surface processes is a key element in earth dynamics and its impact on geo-environment, geo-energy, geo-resources and geo-hazards in general. The European continent and its ocean-continent margins provide an excellent natural laboratory to examine the impact of geodynamics and climate on topography at the earth’s surface. The overview presented here demonstrates the need for a further understanding of the earth system across space and timescales. Cross-border scientific cooperation on a full pan-European scale, benefiting from funding opportunities offered by the European Commission and a pro-active role in bottom-up self-organization involving members of the Earth and Cosmic Sciences section of Academia Europaea, is needed more than ever.

The COVID pandemic enforced unprecedented pressure upon the academic clinician workforce globally. While in some aspects this has been a time of opportunity for academic clinicians, it has also exposed the vulnerabilities of this career path and the challenges early-career academic clinicians face. These challenges include the lack of dedicated training programmes, obstacles to international recognition of their career paths, and the remuneration gap between academic clinicians and their clinical counterparts. Addressing these issues will require a concerted effort from policymakers, funding agencies, and the medical community. However, investing in increasing the pool of academic clinicians in the long term is essential to advancing medical knowledge and improving the wellbeing of all of society.

We begin from the assumption that where scientific research will predictably be used to affect things of moral significance in the world, you have a special duty, a duty of care, to ‘get it right’. This, we argue, requires a special kind of objectivity, ‘objectivity to be found’. What is it that’s to be found? In any kind of scientific endeavour, you should make all reasonable efforts to find the right methods to get the right results to serve the purposes at stake and neither exaggerate nor underestimate the credibility of what you have done. That, we take it, is what in this context constitutes objectivity and intellectual humility. But where your results will affect the world, you have a more demanding duty: a duty to ‘get it right’ about the purposes the endeavour should serve. Often the most morally significant purposes are those that ‘go without saying’ and because they are not said, we can too easily overlook them, sometimes at the cost even of human lives. We illustrate this with the example of the Vajont dam design and the flawed modelling that resulted in the Hillsborough football disaster.

This article is a summary of a panel discussion entitled ‘Towards an inclusive and representative academic landscape’, held at the Building Bridges Meeting of Academia Europaea and the Young Academy of Europe on 26 October 2022. The panellists were Professor Yvonne Galligan, director of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and Professor of Comparative Politics at the Technological University Dublin, Dr Katalin Solymosi, plant biologist, assistant professor at Eötvös Loránd University and vice-chair of the Young Academy of Europe, and Professor Stephen Curry, Assistant Provost for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion and Professor of Structural Biology at Imperial College London. Dr Linn Leppert, Associate Professor of Computational Chemical Physics and board member of the Young Academy of Europe chaired the discussion.

Over the past several decades, historians of Medieval Europe have worked to show the complexity and diversity of Europe’s religious, linguistic and cultural landscape. Medieval Europe was neither a multicultural paradise nor an ethnically pure enclave. Archaeology, ethnolinguistics, literary studies and textual studies all show the constant movement of populations into and across Europe, from earliest antiquity until today. I have participated in two European-funded projects that explore different aspects of that religious and cultural diversity. From 2010 to 2015, I directed an ERC advanced grant entitled ‘RELMIN: The legal status of religious minorities in the Euro-Mediterranean world (5th–15th centuries)’. Since 2019, I am one of the four directors of an ERC synergy grant, ‘The European Qur’ān,’ which explores the place of the Qur’ān in European culture between the twelfth and early nineteenth centuries. This article presents these two European research programmes and their implications for understanding the history of Europe’s religious diversity.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has finally reached most people on our planet thanks to generative AI tools for text and other media. This has started a controversy about the possible benefits and risks, where responsible AI is key. Hence, we introduce the concept of responsible AI, its relation to AI ethics, and why the terms ethical or trustworthy AI should not be used. We then cover the three main relevant aspects of this new field: principles governance and regulation.