HumAct é um projeto de 3 anos financiado pelo Programa Erasmus+ Capacity Building para o Ensino Superior e é coordenado pelo ISCTE –Instituto Universitário de Lisboa., tendo como parceiros: a Universidade Nacional e Kapodistriana de Atenas, Universidade de Cabo Verde e a Universidade de Santiago, de Cabo Verde e a Universidade Pedagógica, Universidade de Pungué e Universidade de Rovuma, de Moçambique. O principal objetivo do projeto é aumentar a capacidade das instituições de ensino superior na área da Ação Humanitária (AH) em relação a mudanças climáticas e deslocamentos nos países parceiros, especificamente em Cabo Verde e Moçambique, em colaboração com instituições dos países do programa, como Grécia e Portugal.  Os objetivos específicos são:   • Aumentar a resposta do ensino superior no que diz respeito a conteúdos relevantes pra a AH  • Promover a investigação de docentes e alunos relativamente a AH  • Desenvolver as estratégias pedagógicas dos docentes • Fortalecer o envolvimento das comunidades   

Over the last decades, social and emotional learning (SEL) has been increasingly acknowledged to impact on competency areas such as self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationships skills, and responsible decision-making. Mindfulness training is a multimodal intervention informed by the principles of positive psychology, with a central focus on skills that enable more effective coping and stress reduction. The application of mindfulness-based practices (MBP) has been strengthened by the results of evaluation studies that typically report on the positive effectiveness of MBP in terms of SEL. In parallel, research results show that exposure to natural environments arouses positive emotions and stress recovery, and improves compliance to mindfulness training, making it more effective. As such, the role of nature in the workplace is receiving increased attention, and existing theory and research suggest that nature contact can be considered as a workplace strategy for reducing stress, while at the same time enhancing performance and overall well-being. Therefore, Mindfulness-in Nature-based practices (MiNBP) joins together the healing effect of nature and the distressful effect of MBP, with greater benefits. It is therefore essential for company’s managers to understand how MiNBP has the potential to benefit their staff towards a systematic approach to SEL, in particular when considering the perspective of the five-competency-area framework. 

General Objective: Work-related stress is now widely recognised as a significant problem as its costs can involve high levels of sickness absence, accidents, errors, low morale and poor performance. Work-related stress is conditioned by, and contributes to, major environmental, economic and health problems. It has a significant impact on the well-being of staff, their productivity and effectiveness, and much of it is likely to be preventable. Given the exponential increase of work-related stress issues and the diffusion of depression among the European citizens, the WELLy project aims to set the role of Work Well-being Manager (WWM) in charge of making sure that daily working conditions are fair and as healthy as reasonably possible for every employee so that the overall quality of life at work improves within the organisation and across economies. Specific Objectives: The proposal aims to encourage a proactive approach and highlight the major role managers can play in reducing the problems of stress. For this reason the profile of Work Well-being Manager will be introduced: he/she has a cross-functional role which leverages psychological skills including diversity management, particularly when it comes to disabled persons as they often require specific adjustments of their work environment. On top of this, the Work Well-being Manager cooperates with other departments to analyse the issues caused or that could cause work-related stress, and to reduce psychosocial risks and improve employees’ commitment and engagement.

Developing Competences for Stress Resilience @SMEs (DeSTRESS) aims to provide an innovative VET-based solution to this problem. Building on existing research, partners will develop a VET curriculum supported by an innovative VET Digital Training Platform using the latest techniques in game-based training and gamification, complemented by a set of practical tools and resources to facilitate the transfer of learning into the workplace. This environment will expose the main psychosocial health risks and their real impact on the individuals’ life and on the companies’ productivity. Players will assume roles, enabling them to think back on their experiences with these specific situations and how it happened, and which solutions are available for each scenario. Besides raising awareness on the problem, the project outputs will enable owner, managers and even decision makers to plan for and to mitigate its occurrence and the negative consequences of work- based stress. For that purpose, both a policy report and recommendations will be produced. A network of facilitators will also be created as an open forum to debate these issues. As such, the project will contribute to strengthening key digital competences in initial VET while preventing the inherent hazards. 

Psychosocial Risks prevention was identified as a key priority and the recognition of the significant changes in the work context contributed for emphasizing Emergent Psychosocial Risks - EPR (e.g., precarious contracts, ageing workforce, and family-work conflict) (EU-OSHA, 2007). The contextual factors and risk management practices critical for prevention have been evidenced in research and support the European policy and national strategies and obligations. However, ESENER survey reveal that these policies did not yet consolidate into generalized good practices (EU-OSHA, 2010, 2012). It is also acknowledged that social dialogue is a key factor for improving quality in work (EC, 2003), implementing participative solutions and empowering the stakeholders increase the success of the preventive actions. The accomplishment and positive outcomes of this involvement require that the stakeholders have opportunity to participate and that their perspectives are taking into account. The current societal and economic crises amplified the threats related to psychosocial risks. In this context SMEs are more vulnerable and also facing bigger challenges for initiating, maintaining and improve prevention initiatives. The present action intends to contribute for an efficient promotion of knowledge dissemination and offer an informative toolkit for preventive actions towards EPR that SMEs are facing, cross industry and cross sector.  This will be achieved using social dialogue with different formal stakeholders.  Action specific objectives are:  Map the SMEs knowledge about EPR; Identify best practices and main obstacles perceived by SMEs Stakeholders; organize a workshop with stakeholders to disseminate and debate knowledge, action plans and a tool kit; develop a tool kit that can be easily used by SMEs. The action targets SMEs in four European countries that are facing severe societal challenges due to the economic crisis (Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain).

Equipa: Prof. Carlos Guedes Soares (UETN -IST), Prof.ª Celeste Jacinto (UETN -IST), Prof. Helena Carvalho (CIES-ISCTE), Engº Ângelo Teixeira (UETN -IST), Engº Pedro Antão (UETN -IST). Bolseiros: Maria João Oliveira (CIS/ISCTE); Tiago Fialho (UETN- IST); José Tavares (CIS/ISCTE).  Consultores: Prof. John Kingston (Invited Professor in Delft University).  

  Existe um cada vez maior número de pessoas que sofrem, por períodos de meses ou anos, de dores persistentes que não estão associadas a qualquer tipo de doença ou de lesão. Os dados epidemiológicos internacionais referem que, em média, 35,5% das pessoas experienciam dor crónica (DC) e que 11% dos adultos apresentam DC grave e incapacitante. A guerra contra a dor tem uma história relativamente recente tanto a nível nacional como internacional, havendo ainda muito por fazer. De facto, a dor tem sido um dos tópicos de investigação mais negligenciados na história da medicina. É só com a Teoria do Portão (Melzack e Wall, 1965) que a dor, que era tradicionalmente vista como uma resposta directa e linear a um estímulo, passa a ser concebida como um fenómeno de natureza bio-psicosocial. Uma área de investigação recente que reflete uma abordagem do fenómeno da dor nas suas vertentes biológica, psicológica e sócio-cultural é aquela que procura analisar as variáveis relativas ao sexo e género na experiência de dor. Efetivamente, os estudos sobre o sexo e género na experiência de dor procuram integrar variáveis de natureza psicológica e social para uma melhor compreensão do fenómeno. Esta foi uma das constribuições mais gerais deste projecto. Partindo de evidências que apontam para diferenças de sexo na experiência de dor, este projeto procurou estabelecer uma ponte entre duas linhas de literatura que raramente se cruzavam: 1) a literatura sobre crenças de controlo e estratégias de coping, de natureza predominantemente individualista e psicológica; e 2) os estudos de género, que acrescentam uma perspectiva sociológica e psicossocial. O projeto partiu de uma abordagem geral sobre a forma como leigo/as e técnico/as de saúde (ex., enfermeira/os e médico/as de família) percebem a dor crónica e factores de género associados. Mais especificamente, procurou-se entender até que ponto as pessoas possuiam expectativas de papel de género face ao controlo sobre a dor e estraté...

Projecto coordenado pelo Prof. Josep Melià e financiado pelo PIPN - Proyectos de Investigación del Plan Nacional de I+D+I , Ministério de Educação e Ciência Espanhol e co-financiado pelo FEDER (BIA2004-05475).  Equipa internacional com investigadores de Espanha, Portugal e Reino Unido.