Environmental Diplomacy and Geopolitics
Acronym: EDGE
Programme: H2020
Call: TWINN-2015
Duration: from 01/03/2016 till 28/02/2019
Description: The Environmental Diplomacy and Geopolitics (EDGE) project – funded through the European Union’s Horizon 2020 programme for Research and Innovation (Grant Agreement 692413) – seeks to increase and reinforce the cooperation between the University of Economics in Bratislava, Sciences Po and the University of Liège in the field of Environmental Diplomacy and Geopolitics.
This field of international relations is gaining increasing importance, as environmental issues have become an increasingly important matter in international politics. The three partner universities have all developed a specific field of expertise in relation to the topic of the project.
The University of Economics in Bratislava (EUBA) – the Faculty of International Relations more specifically – has developed a wide expertise in the politics of environmental resources, including its security dimension;
Sciences Po Paris (Sc Po) has recently launched a new research programme entitled Politics of the Earth, which looks at the new geopolitical challenges brought upon by the Anthropocene;
The University of Liège (ULg) specialises in the human impacts of environmental changes, with a specific expertise on migration and security issues. In November 2016, it has launched the The Hugo Observatory, the first scientific research structure dedicated to the interactions between environment, migration and politics.
Thus the areas of expertise of the three partners covers a wide range of subjects related to environmental diplomacy and geopolitics: resources, politics and impacts. The key objective of this partnership is to bring these areas of expertise together to create a comprehensive and consistent cluster of research and teaching activities.
These activities include:
- A series of three Annual Conferences: The Hugo Conference is the first of the series
- An exchange scheme for staff and students
- An annual summer school. The first summer school, on Politics of the Earth, was organized by Sciences Po in Paris in September 2016
- A European certificate in Environmental Diplomacy and Geopolitics
- A rotating chair in Environmental Diplomacy: in May 2016, Sciences Po and EUBA welcomed Clive Hamilton from Charles Sturt university
- Joint panels and publications, such as The State of Environmental Migration series.
MigrAtion Governance and AsYlum Crises
Acronym: MAGYC
Programme: H2020
Call: SC6-MIGRATION-02-2018
Duration: from 01/11/2018 till 30/10/2022
Description: MAGYC seeks to assess how migration governance has been influenced by the recent “refugee crises” and how crises at large shape policy responses on migration. The general objective of the project is to appraise policy responses in the light of the ‘crisis’ and assess their efficiency for the long-term governance of migration. This overall objective shall be fulfilled through the pursuit of different specific objectives:
- Reflecting on policy gaps in migration governance, and analysing jointly the emergence and implementation of regulatory instruments (including national public policies, bottom-up local initiatives and regional and international frameworks)
- Correlating this analysis with migration dynamics in order to develop indicators of migration governance, to better assess the effectiveness of the different policy instruments developed in reaction to the crisis.
- Understanding the articulation between migration dynamics and policy responses.
- Offering a dynamic analysis of policy-making, focusing on knowledge-policy discrepancies, cognitive gaps in policy making and points of contention.
- Proposing possible avenues for the development of innovative migration governance strategies that break away from path dependency."
Shaping EUROpean policies to promote HEALTH equitY
Acronym: EURo-Healthy
Programme: H2020
Description: Health inequities have been increasing in Europe, particularly in a context of an ageing society and economic and social crisis. In countries with different levels of infrastructures and health system preparedness, health inequities create significant policy challenges. Addressing this challenge, the EU funded project EURO-HEALTHY (Shaping EUROpean policies to promote HEALTH equitY), over the past two and a half years has worked to identify and understand key factors that affect European population health and to advance knowledge as to which policies have the highest potential to enhance health and health equity across 269 European regions. For this reason the project has developed tools – based on a Population Health Index (PHI) – to evaluate and monitor overall health as well as interactions between health and multiple dimensions at different geographical levels. The PHI is used to foresee (using scenario analyses) and discuss the impact of multi-level policies and combinations of policies to promote population health and health equity across European regions with more emphasis on two case studies (Lisbon and Turin).
Promoting Mindful Encounters Through Intercultural Competence And Experience
Acronym: PROMINENCE
Programme: ERASMUS+
Description: The PROMINENCE project addresses key objectives of policies concerning the relevance of higher education (HE) by opening avenues for cooperation linking teachers, students and employers. PROMINENCE is about providing SMEs with greater opportunities, by providing them with graduates entering the job market who have been trained using authentic, up to date, digitalised learning materials, focused on the actual needs SMEs identify in overcoming cross-cultural communication problems affecting their business activities. PROMINENCE therefore works to ensure the partner universities earn their proper places the European society of the future – today. In other words, PROMINENCE represents one clear example of a way forward for higher education. The main output is an online learning and teaching platform to the development of which stakeholders from educational institutions (both students and teachers) and working life (Employers and employees from SMEs) contribute. The digitally created environment allows accessibility to all stakeholders across borders. The content of the project, promotion of cross-cultural communication skills together with the utilisation of ICT tools and modern pedagogical approaches, aims to increase interoperability and portability of applicable information, as well as to encourage educational institutions to adopt innovative ways of teaching and learning.
Knowledge, Innovation, Territory
Acronym: KIT
Programme: ESPON
Call: 2013
Duration: from 01/02/2010 till 01/12/2012
Description: New scientific and technological powers outside the European territory are attracting considerable and increasing amounts of R&D investments. Against this background new opportunities arise but also the question of Europe’s ability to sustain a competitive edge in knowledge and innovation. The EC recognises the territorial dimension of the innovation and knowledge economy and its role in potential territorial development and cohesion in both, the Green Paper on the European Research Area as well as the Green Paper on Territorial Cohesion. Knowledge has in recent years become a key driver for growth of economic systems, and the access to knowledge is generally considered as a key condition for innovative activities in our modern economy. The project takes this policy context as a starting point to explore the territorial dimension of the innovation and knowledge economy. An overall concept is used including product innovation, process innovation and organisational innovation. This project will take into account the current state, patterns and potentials of regions with respect to the knowledge and innovation economy and identify new development opportunities through innovation for Europe and its territories.
Link: https://www.espon.eu/kit
Interreg Central - ENTER-transfer
Acronym: ENTER-transfer
Programme: Interreg Central Europe
Duration: from 01/06/2017 till 31/05/2020
Link: https://www.interreg-central.eu/Content.Node/ENTER-transfer.html
Interreg Central - RESTAURA
Acronym: RESTAURA
Programme: Interreg Central Europe
Description: RESTAURA project is aiming at identifying, testing, evaluating and promoting good practice on the use of Public-Private Partnerships (PPP) for the revitalisation of historical cities and buildings. PPP allows organisations to combine the unique assets and skills of the public and private sectors to protect heritage resources. With limited public resources available for this purpose (e.g. national and EU funds), the involvement of private financing and expertise through PPP is the only alternative to save and provide ongoing management to the unique built heritage of Central Europe. Until now, there have only been a few examples of PPP used in revitalisation projects within Europe, RESTAURA’s aim is to promote a real change for the better in the use of PPP across Central Europe
Link: https://www.interreg-central.eu/Content.Node/RESTAURA.html
Assessing and Improving the Research Performance at South East Asian Universities
Acronym: REPESEA
Programme: ERASMUS+
Call: CBHE
Description: On of the focus of the Erasmus+ Capacity Building in Higher Education is on the investment in research and innovation, which is foreseen as essential for Europe’s society aiming to produce Europe as world-class science and technology community that drives economic growth not only in the European geographical area. As part of this effort it is of the foremost importance to bring together European scientists with those from around the world. Building research and innovation capacities is a challenging task and the current project will address this task within the cooperation network of Asian and European partners. The research capacities will be developed at partner higher education institutions in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand through the creation and implementation of the System of the Assessment of Quality and Impact of Research and the development and the introduction of self-contained transferable research skill training modules. Though individual partner universities are at different levels of the research capacities development, all of them strive to embrace the ways towards their improved research performance. The diversity of partner higher education institutions involved in the project (public vs. private, research vs. teaching focused, traditional vs. new, located in the capital city vs. in rural areas, focused on social vs. technical sciences, located in high income vs. medium/lower income countries) allows for addressing the research capacity building goal from diverse perspectives and for achieving necessary synergies in the partnership. The transfer of the best practice and knowledge in the area of research capacities in both ways will provide additional value added for European partners.
Link: https://www.repesea.org/
FINancial Supervision and TECHnological Compliance training programme
Acronym: FINTECH
Programme: H2020
Description: Financial Technology (Fin Tech) means “Technology enabled financial innovations”. There is a strong need to improve the competitiveness of the European FinTech sector, creating a common regulatory field across all countries which, while encouraging innovations in Big Data analytics, Artificial Intelligence, and Blockchain technologies, can correctly measure their risks. Europe is a broad mosaic of regulatory landscapes. Policy makers and regulators must move quickly to establish a new regulatory framework for emerging fintechs, without stifling their economic potential.
The FIN-TECH project, under the EU’s Horizon2020 funding scheme, aims to create a European training programme, aimed at providing shared risk management solutions that automatize compliance of Fintech companies (RegTech) and, at the same time, increases the efficiency of supervisory activities (SupTech). In other words, we aim at connecting FINancial supervision with TECHnological compliance
Electromobility in urban transport: a multi-dimensional innovation (socio-economic and environmental effects)
Acronym: eMobilita
Programme: H2020
Call: MSCA-RISE 2016
Description: At present, transition towards electromobility in urban transport and related companies are among the most studied industrial areas. Different EU countries implement different methodological and business approaches to investigate the possibilities for the acceleration of electromobility integration in urban transport. Studies on these approaches to be shared within the project consortium and with different stakeholders (local authorities, producers of electric vehicles and recharging stations) will provide the basis of the initiative for increasing the interest in electromobility integration in urban transport as a multi-dimensional innovation. The thin red line of electromobility practical integration passes through the sharing of innovative ideas with relevant stakeholders by carrying out field studies, in-depth interviews and electronic on-line studies.
EMobilita overall objective is to study the conditions, prerequisites and incentives for electromobility integration in urban transport and elaboration of a roadmap for its development. The specific objectives are:
- To explore the experience of the European countries in the integration of electromobility in urban transport and to identify good practices;
- To summarize direct and indirect multi-dimensional effects (social, economic and environmental) of the introduction of electromobility in urban transport schemes;
- To elaborate a roadmap with concrete measures for introducing electromobility in urban transport;
- To establish a sustainable partnership between universities and businesses through staff exchange and networking activities.
In order to achieve our objectives we created a network of academic and non-academic institutions from Bulgaria, Slovakia, Italy and Greece.
Link: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/207049/factsheet/it
GEopolitics of Resilience: A Human secUrity diMension of climAte chaNge
Acronym: ERA-HUMAN
Programme: HORIZON
Call: WIDERA-2022-TALENTS-01
Duration (tentative): from 2022 till 2027
Proposal No.: No. 101087654
Description: The GEopolitics of Resilience: A Human secUrity diMension of climAte chaNge (ERA-HUMAN) is intended to follow up on the series of successful projects such as H2020 GA 692413 EDGE, H2020 GA 822806 MAGYC or EPLUS GA 619487 CHILDRN and tries to bring the cross-faculty team that emerged from these projects closer together under the supervision of Professor Francois Gemenne to address the current Europe-wide need for exploration of resilience and human security impacts of climate change articulated also in strategic documents of Slovakia such as the Manifesto of the government of the Slovak Republic as well as Slovakia’s Recovery and Resilience Plan. The project proposal intends to establish a Resilience Research Centre at the University of Economics in Bratislava and surround it with activities to further reinforce research capacities, outreach and structural recharge of the University.
Please read the Letter of Committment of the prospective ERA Chair / Professor Francois Gemenne HERE.
Please read the Letter of Committment of the University of Economics in Bratislava HERE.
