PIONEER is an Alliance of European Universities dedicated to SDG 11 'Sustainable Cities and Communities', addressing the need for cities to become inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable. The alliance brings together 10 impact-driven universities, including an associated Swiss partner, and covers 32 cities and 16 regions across Europe. By bringing together academics, public institutions, private organisations and citizens in our orchestration framework, we will develop joint challenge-based education, impact-driven research and innovation co-creation initiatives that contribute to many European, regional and urban agendas, such as the EU Green Deal and the 'Fit for 55' package. To this end, PIONEER will also be a facilitator of inter-institutional learning and a tool for institutional change. We will achieve this ambition through strategic integration at the institutional level: gradually aligning our individual strategies and institutional trajectories, building a common development strategy to become truly international institutions integrated in a federal framework.This framework will be inspired by the European Union, with a strong strategic centre that draws on and supports the diversity and autonomy of our partners to build a flexible and complementary academic ecosystem, while working together on a common strategy and development path. Committed to spreading European values and promoting inclusion and diversity, the PIONEER Open Campus will offer seamless mobility for students and unique leadership development opportunities for staff. Our Knowledge Hub will enable member universities and over 40 associated partners from regional ecosystems to work together on matters concerning SDG11.

The KiDLE project aims to support the inclusion of migrant children/pupils in new school environments by co-creating 5 intercultural board games and integrating them into a digital gaming pack. The project seeks to build educators' and parents' capacity to use games for children's learning and development, implement the gaming pack through gaming events, and raise awareness about the role of cross-cultural games in early childhood education towards supporting inclusion.

The main aim of the Ethics in Dementia (EDEM) COST Action is to reduce burnout and moral distress among caregivers and promote the dignity, autonomy, and quality of life of people with dementia. Dementia is a health challenge on the rise. The overall number of people with dementia in Europe is expected to almost double from 1.57% of the population in 2018, to 3% in 2050. There is no effective treatment for any of the 200 known dementia diseases. It is not possible to halt or reverse the cognitive decline caused by dementia. This makes care the most important health intervention for people with dementia. However, there are profound ethical difficulties involved in caring for people with dementia. Their gradual cognitive loss complicates retainment of autonomy and agency, and causes a number of ethical care dilemmas, including: balancing safety with freedom, deciding what is in their best interests and recognising that the needs of the person with dementia may sometimes conflict with the needs of others who also deserve consideration. Legal frameworks and guidelines are helpful in guiding practice and decision-making, but they need to be interpreted and applied to specific situations. EDEM addresses this challenge. By involving a multitude of stakeholders in developing an ethical framework, recommendations and an educational toolkit available for use across Europe, EDEM aims at improving dignity, autonomy and quality of life of people with dementia, as well as reducing burnout and moral distress among caregivers. Action keywords Dementia - Ethics - Autonomy - Dignity - Person centered care

The InCITIES project aims to achieve the transformations of HEIs and their surrounding ecosystem centred around on cities’ needs of inclusion, sustainability and resilience. Its specific focus on widening countries (Portugal and Slovakia) will allow to overcome structural, sociocultural, economic, political and institutional barriers to transformation fostering. Addressing the European-global challenges of cities, InCITIES has 4 objectives: 1) Map institutional transformation strategies towards research-based sustainable universities including open science and career opportunities. 2) Build a long-term network of participating HEIs and surrounding ecosystems based on integrated knowledge HUBs. 3) Increase scientific, technological and staff capacity by sharing the best pedagogical, research, management and administrative practices in the consortium, and piloting leverages to widening HEIs. 4) Promote digitally driven universities by creating an open and innovative education and training platform in synergy with the project research and innovation agenda on inclusive, sustainable and resilient cities. The 5 methods jointly developed will set the foundation for the consortium role model: 1) Method for a common research map, 2) Capacity building actions based on the Learning by Developing pedagogical model, 3) Capacity building in talent scout and career opportunity strategy (attractiveness of research careers, including open science incentives), 4) Capacity building on equality, diversity and inclusion, 5) Methods to address enablers and barriers to integration of the InCITIES Alliance. From knowledge co-creation to joint production between European HEIs, surrounding ecosystems and citizens’ involvement, integrated actions play a key-role in achieving the consortium objectives. Capacity building actions implemented are a step towards the submission to the European Universities Initiative; it will strengthen the ERA, the EEA, and Europe’s approach to coope...

We are living in times of deep contradictions. While our world accelerates and grows smaller through superfast digital networks, it is also marked by widening socio-economic disparities. We face viral pandemics, rapid species extinction, increased automation of work, quick fixes for mental health, political upheavals and displacements of old certainties. Adaptation and resilience to these challenges must draw on past experiences and cultural resources – this can only happen if we slow down and take time to remember well. This Action addresses the need for increased interdisciplinarity in our understanding of how societies confront their past to contend with environmental, economic and social changes brought on by sudden events and by slow and creeping transformations. The future of peace, prosperity, politics, work and climate will depend upon how we remember socio-cultural and political changes. Transformative practices of remembrance – as objects of study and as critical interventions – will be shared collaboratively across Arts and Sciences in order to reveal the ways in which humans confront large-scale processes of change. This Action will uniquely focus the attention of scholars, policymakers and cultural professionals on alternative paths to build resilience in the face of contemporary rapid-response culture. Through transnational and interdisciplinary discussions, we will address urgency, emergency, crisis and acceleration by drawing together the ‘multi-sited’, ‘eventless’ and slow-moving phenomena that can best be studied by ‘slowing down’ our research methods, to afford capacity building, knowledge generation and impact activities. Inspired by ‘slow science’ (Stengers 2018), we seek an alternative kind of social remembering. Action keywords memory and heritage studies - oral history - inequality - political culture - democratic governance

Wearable Robots (WRs) is an emerging field of personal devices that are integrated parts of human functioning, and that are constructed of typical robotic components such as actuators, sensors and control algorithms. Where conventional robots were typically intended for use in industrial environments to help in tedious and repetitive tasks and tasks requiring high precision, the situation is currently evolving to one where there is an increasing direct physical interaction between robot and human operator. The interaction with humans in WRs is not only physical, but also includes cognitive aspects, as in the interaction, control of functions is typically shared by human and machine.  WRs can be used either to augment, train or supplement motor functions or to replace them completely. Wearable Robots operate alongside human limbs, as is the case in orthotic robots, exoskeletons or robotic suits. WRs are expected to find applications in Medical, Industrial and Consumer Domains, such as neuro-rehabilitation, worker support, or general augmentation. As WRs continuously interact with humans in multiple situations, Human Robot Interaction, Ergonomics, and Ethical, Legal and Societal (ELS) considerations, as well as early involvement of stakeholders are of essential interest. This Action focuses on the European integration of different underlying disciplines in science and engineering, as well as on engaging of stakeholders to improve WR technology and its societal impact. Action keywords Wearable Robots - Physical Human Robot Interaction - Human Motor Control - ELS Aspects - Quality of Life

The ability to negotiate digital forms of literacy carries high stakes for life destinations but in early childhood education, literacy still tends to be approached as predominantly print-based. The technologies through which children now engage with all forms of knowledge are constantly changing with the widespread use of an array of digital, interactive, converged and personalised devices. These are transforming the skills and literacies needed by even the youngest children to be competent actors in the world while, at the same time, challenging the efforts of parents and teachers to support their learning. The development of relevant skills and knowledge for reading and writing contemporary texts is crucial for educational, economic, social and cultural progress in Europe. The proposed Action will create an interdisciplinary network to examine how young children Action keywords digital literacy - early childhood - multimodality - media literacy - new technologies