Research projects led by the University of Coimbra secure €6m in funding from Horizon Europe

The University of Coimbra (UC) will be leading two research projects funded by the Horizon Europe programme, which have secured a total of approximately €6 million under Cluster 2: Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society of the European Union's funding programme. The UC stands out in this call as the Portuguese institution with the most accepted projects, being the lead in two, and participating in two others.

The two UC-led projects are ‘CONCILIARE, Confidently Changing Colonial Heritage', coordinated by the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences (FPCEUC), funded with over €2.7 million; and ' EU-CIEMBLY: Creating an Inclusive European Citizens' Assembly’, coordinated by the Legal Institute (IJ) of the Faculty of Law of the University of Coimbra (FDUC), with a funding of around €3 million.

"CONCILIARE will 'study the representations and reactions of European citizens to changes in colonial heritage in four contexts, namely school textbooks, public spaces (e.g., statues and street names), museums, traditions, and cultural goods,' explains FPCEUC professor Joaquim Pires Valentim, coordinator of the project. He further adds, “In Europe, changes in colonial cultural heritage have been linked to tensions and conflicts in intergroup relations, along with a perceived threat to representations of European identity. A thorough knowledge of these processes is key to finding empirically based solutions in these domains.”

As for EU-CIEMBLY, the project aims to create new avenues for citizen participation and deliberation in the political life of the European Union (EU). Dulce Lopes, the project coordinator and IJ researcher, explains, “Our goal is to develop a novel tool for citizen participation in the EU—not just through a theoretical approach but via pilot assemblies intended to generate legal and policy recommendations specifically related to citizen engagement.” Lopes also adds, “The prototype assembly will be designed with features that allow it to be replicated at different national and local levels of EU member states.”

"Given the highly competitive nature of the Horizon Europe programme, this is another outstanding achievement for the University of Coimbra. It emphasises the strength of our community in securing competitive funding, leading two ambitious projects and participating in two others," says Amílcar Falcão, Rector of the University of Coimbra.

One of the projects in which the University of Coimbra participates is RESTORY - Recovering Past Stories for the Future: A Synergistic Approach to Textual and Oral Heritage of Small Communities, led by the University of Babeș-Bolyai in Cluj-Napoca (Romania) and coordinated at the UC by Maria Amélia Campos, a researcher at the Centre for the History of Society and Culture, who explains that “The project aims to provide examples of sustainable development for the present by studying the past of small communities and analysing strategies for managing human and material resources.".

‘PROTEMO - Emotional dynamics of protective policies in an age of insecurity’ is the other funded project involving the University of Coimbra, led by the Universitat Des Saarlandes (Germany) and coordinated at the UC by FPCEUC professor Lisete Mónico. "The research project aims to address the emotional dynamics of social protection policies, studying how policy makers understand and influence the emotional needs of citizens (and non-citizens) and how this is reflected in the political process," explains the UC research team.

Horizon Europe's Cluster 2: Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society Horizon Europe Cluster 2 funds research and innovation projects in three domains: democracy and governance; cultural heritage and the cultural and creative industries; and social change.

Translation: Diana Taborda