N. (Nati) Mansilla Ovejero, LLM

ERASMUS+- EQUiiP  : Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices EQUiiP  (Educational Quality at Universities for Inclusive International Programmes) -  (36 months: September 2016 - August 2019)

Coordinator: University of Groningen

The internationalization of Higher Education has resulted in greater diversity of learners and teaching staff in our universities. This places new demands on the university teaching staff and programme directors who need to master an additional set of skills and competences in addition to the subject knowledge in their areas of expertise. It also places additional demands on educational developers and teacher trainers working in these internationalized programmes.

The EQUiiP project developed:

• a profile of the competences needed by the educational developers working in an international classroom context.
• a comprehensive modular set of materials and descriptions of appropriate practices for educational developers.

The outcomes are available on an electronic platform to educators and policy makers in higher education across Europe> www.equiip.eu

EU H2020 - CARISMAND - Secure Societies: CARISMAND (Culture And RISkmanagement in Man-made And Natural Disasters) - (36 months: October 2015 - September 2018)

Coordinator: University of Groningen

As risks are not “objective” but socially and culturally constructed, disaster management which is aware, respects, and makes use of local cultural aspects will be not only more effective but, at the same time, also improve the community’s disaster coping capacities. CARISMAND is setting out to identify these factors, to explore existing gaps and opportunities for improvement of disaster policies and procedures, and to develop a comprehensive toolkit which will allow professional as well as voluntary disaster managers to adopt culturally-aware everyday practices. This goal will be achieved by approaching the links, and gaps, between disaster management, culture and risk perception fromthe broadest possible multi-disciplinary perspective and, simultaneously, developing a feedback-loop between disaster management stakeholders and citizens to establish, test, and refine proposed solutions for culturally-informed best practices in disaster management. Whilst experts from a variety of fields (in particular legal, IT, cognitive science, anthropology, psychology, sociology) will undertake a comprehensive collation of existing knowledge and structures, a number of Citizen Summits and Stakeholder Assemblies will be organised. Systematically, CARISMAND will use an approach that examines natural, man-made and technical disasters, placing at the centre of attention specific aspects that affect culturally informed risk perceptions, eg whether disasters are caused intentionally or not, the different “visibility” of hazards, and various time scales of disasters such as slow/fast onset and short- and long-term effects. By organising six Citizen Summits (two per disaster category per year in two separate locations) where such disaster risks are prevalent, and three Stakeholder Assemblies (one per year) where the results are discussed through a wide crosssectional knowledge transfer between disaster managers from different locations as well as from different cultural backgrounds.

EU H2020 - CITYCoP - Secure Societies: CITYCoP (Citizen Interaction Technologies Yield Community Policing) - (36 months: June 2015 - May 2018)

Coordinator: University of Groningen

Theories underlying community policing received new impetus with the recent advent of smartphones and social media and especially user-generated content (UGC) where citizens engage in closer interaction with their local community and law enforcement agency (LEA). The years 2010-2014 have seen a rapid upsurge of smartphone apps aimed at improving crime reporting and other forms of UGC and interaction associated with community policing. Yet these apps are characterised by a predominantly Anglo-Saxon approach with the largest number originating in the USA, a few in Canada, Australia and with the UK apparently the only major EU state where there has been some takeup of these technologies. CITYCoP sets out to find out why the EU appears to be lagging behind although Community Policing is nominally a policy which has been put into action in a number of EU countries. It then goes on to develop a solution including a new smartphone app and on-line portal which are capable of being deployed in any European city while still retaining “local flavour” and diversity. These ICT solutions will also be designed from scratch to be fully compliant with strict privacy and data protection laws. A training scheme, including use of serious games, will be developed to assist training of officers and citizens in use of the app and portal. CITYCoP will benefit from a multidisciplinary approach that will include the sociology of community policing as well as cognitive science perspectives of the citizen’s interaction with community and LEAs through technology. The partners in CITYCoP build on long years of successful collaboration in EU projects dealing with UGC, smart surveillance and privacy (CONSENT, SMART, RESPECT) positioning CITYCoP solutions to achieve integration into smart city eco-systems. CITYCoP will pilot deployments of multi-lingual smartphone apps, portals and serious games training packages in Bucharest (Romania), Lisbon (Portugal), Florence (Italy), Sheffield (UK).