WED PT – Elites in Portugal is a research project inscribed in the World Elite Database (https://worldelitedatabase.org/), which is a cooperative data and analysis project led by researchers on elite populations across the world. We are an international consortium of scholars from Chile, China, Denmark, Italy, France, Finland, Germany, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the USA, but with the purpose of expanding to more countries worldwide. We work together to develop a new standardized data regime to study and share data about elites. Our aim is to solve the problem of comparability and heterogeneity in the study of national power structures, and to foster a cooperative community of scholars interested in studying elite populations systematically. Having in mind this international approach, “WED PT – Elites in Portugal” also has the objective of deepening the study of elites in Portugal, and for that will mobilize the theoretical and methodological instruments for historical and contemporary challenges that the study of elites entails for better understanding inequalities, class, values, democracy, economic growth, development, and social well-being.

SYNCLUSIVE is an innovative, integral, and interdisciplinary systems’ approach to stimulate inclusion of vulnerable groups in the labor market. To achieve this, our six central objectives are: 1) developing and consolidating a coalition of stakeholders in 4 regional Living Labs across Europe along the lines of the Community Coalition Action Theory, using the ENGINE approach. This approach includes an integrated package of interventions that stimulates upward and sideward mobility of vulnerable employees, hereby creating vacancies for inflow of vulnerable job seekers; 2) testing the usefulness and applicability of the ENGINE approach for different vulnerable groups identified as being discriminated against; 3) identifying drivers and barriers for mobility and inflow including discrimination; 4) assessing the impact of the implemented ENGINE approach on the labor market mobility and inclusion of vulnerable groups; 5) identifying transition pathways from the regional to the national and EU policy level; and 6) identifying interoperable and comparative indicators and standards that are relevant for the labor market inclusion of vulnerable groups taking into account the regional, national (legislative, social security) and cultural context.

The triennial cooperation project consists of a cooperation between IEFP and ISCTE, through the Youth Employment Observatory, to develop research studies on Youth Employment, Youth Unemployment, Youth Employment Policies, and Youth and the Labour Market. During the first triennium of the cooperation contract the following studies are being developed: profiles of youth unemployment (study 1); young people's perceptions on the services provided by IEFP (study 2); qualitative analysis of the profiles of youth unemployment (study 3); quality of youth employment (study 4).

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...

Digital society and AI are posing new challenges to cities through opportunities to improve the performance and democratization of local and regional public administrations in their relationship with citizens and companies. Digital and AI’s impacts on the structure of inequality have not yet been sufficiently studied within and between countries and at the city levels. We aim to analyse environmental data and inequalities, by simultaneously advancing the social science problem of sustainable development, and improving the digital tools for city problem-solving, together with social stakeholders and municipalities. Through data science and the application of machine learning, statistical data, and place-based knowledge concerning climate problems, the project intends to produce a digital toolkit of geographical-interactive maps of sustainable footprint, supported by a system of multidimensional indicators of environmental inequalities and urban lifestyles, mobility patterns and transport usage.    

Athena Project aims to develop the digital skills of university professors, reinforcing their response to the challenges that universities face today and in the future. The project seeks to foster cooperative learning environments, making them transformative and inclusive through the adoption of new technologies, such as e-learning, gaming platforms, virtual and augmented reality, systematically modeled to activate key competences in digital learning. The project will create models that teachers can adopt and adapt to their classes, using different pedagogical approaches.

How can we measure and monitor the effects of social inequalities in contemporary Portuguese society across regional, national and European scales? International agendas of human and sustainable development accept the premise that to achieve social progress, other dimensions beyond economic growth need to be accounted for. The deep inequalities in Portuguese society threaten the universality of fundamental rights and incite an urgent call for more data, based on technical and scientific knowledge, to understand the relations between inequalities and well-being as well as to frame place-based public policies and interventions. The project aims to develop a system of indicators to improve data availability, visualisation and analysis on the multidimensional relationships between living conditions and well-being in a comparative, intranational and international perspective. The model is based on the OECD framework and will be empirically supported by the European Social Survey as well as other national and international statistical sources. The key findings related to the development and analysis of this data will be considered in the second axis of the project, based on the prospective analysis, by using the Delphi method and place-based case studies. This second stage will involve the mobilization of agents (professionals, technicians and scientists) involved in the organization and implementation of public policies and recruited from the Portuguese Research Network on Public Policies (UMPP). The most valued dimensions in the definition of well-being in different social contexts will be mapped, defining 1) axes of problematic challenges in the relations between inequalities and well-being; 2) sustainable development strategies and place-based priorities from a comparative perspective at national and European levels; and (3) a quantifiable system of indicators and targets that allow the monitoring of the effects of policy action.

Project Title: Graduates Advancement and Development of University capacities in Albania (GRADUA)   Duration: 4 years (15/10/2017-15/10-2021)   Project reference number: 585961- EPP-1-2017-1-AL-EPPKA2-CBHE-SP   Programme: Erasmus +   Action: Capacity Building in Higher Education (CBHE)   The project aims at set up in Albania an innovative IT based platform for graduates tracking and employability at support of policy making and HE reform. The platform is different with respect to existent experiences (databases/job intermediaries): it is an integrated and certified demand/supply matching model based on the online DB of Albanian graduates, easily “replicable” in new universities. The platform has a twofold scope:   -enhance university enterprise cooperation and graduates employability in a unifying context of data aggregation, graduates monitoring and university-enterprises cooperation. Online graduates CVS are certified by universities, made available to companies that can check and compare on line by university, faculty and degree course level the graduates to hire according to set of variable (i.e.academic career, language and IT skills, experiences, expectations). Graduates can update their CVs and directly send their candidature to the firms through the platform. The efficacy of AL in job intermediation with respect to other systems is proven by figures (Bargues and Sylos Labini 2009).   -strengthen both the effectiveness/efficiency of the whole HE system through IT based practices and methodology: the platform is conceived to provide  documentary evidence for decision making processes,  new programmes planning and methodology, with particular attention to training activities and services to students (graduate’ profile survey). It is an integrated model as the surveys’ high response rates together with the statistical quality of data depends on the graduates’ fidelization effect achieved thanks to the placement services offered to them.   The pro...

The multidisciplinary nature of information visualization is today fairly consensual in both professional and academic communities: data analysis, information design, storytelling, among many other subjects, are common drivers in this field. The systematic study of this cross-fertilization represents an important and needed addition to the critical mass of a rather recent area of knowledge. Hence, the definition of the concept is still quite unsteady as it varies to some extent accordingly to the perspective being adopted. The proposal of a single unified definition of the concept is beyond the scope of this project; instead, it summons and discusses information visualization’s multiple viewpoints to help designing a postgraduate course on the topic, aiming to simultaneously start an open debate on the matter as its implementation phase goes on and new questions are risen. This project intends to increase the synergies between areas related to information visualization and dissemination of best visualization practices. Expected outcomes of the project should be participation in conferences that fall within the scope of the project and publication in selected journals.