Participation in International EU-funded projects
Grant Awarding Co-Coordinator (representing the UK)
CLIL Network for Languages in Education: Towards bi- and multilingual disciplinary literacies (CLILNetLE) (2021-2026)
Grant Awarding Co-Coordinator – COST Action CA21114,
People – CLILNetLE (wordpress.com) & Action CA21114 – COST
Description: This Action responds to the move into mainstream education of Content-and-Language-Integrated-Learning (CLIL), i.e., the teaching of non-language subjects through a foreign language. Ongoing challenges in CLIL practice and research negatively affect the realisation of CLIL’s full potential, which lies primarily in helping school-leavers achieve the competence to use at least one foreign language confidently for professional and academic purposes. Young Europeans clearly require such bi/multilingual disciplinary literacies, complementing those in their first language, to succeed in employment and higher education.
Working Group member (representing the UK)
– COST Action CA19102, Language In The Human-Machine Era (LITHME) (2019-2024)
Action CA19102 – COST & https://lithme.eu/
Description: “Within the next 10 years, many millions of people will be … wearing relatively unobtrusive … devices that offer an immersive and high-resolution view of a visually augmented world”.1 This is the ‘human-machine era’, a time when our senses are not just supplemented by handheld mobile devices, but thoroughly augmented. The language we see, hear and produce will be mediated in real time by technology. This has major implications for language use, and ultimately language itself. Are linguists ready for this? Can our theory, methods, and epistemology handle it?
LITHME has two aims: to prepare linguistics and its subdisciplines for what is coming; and to facilitate longer term dialogue between linguists and technology developers. How will pervasive augmentation technology affect language in areas such as international law, translation, and other forms of language work? What will this mean for how people identify with specific languages? Could increasing reliance on real-time language technologies actually change the structure of language? Longer term, could developments in brain-machine interfaces serve to complement or even supersede language altogether? Linguistics will be far stronger for robust technological foresight, while developers will benefit from better understanding potential linguistic and societal consequences of their creations.
Meanwhile LITHME will shine a light on the ethical implications of emerging language technologies. Inequality of access to technologies, questions of privacy and security, new vectors for deception and crime; these and other critical issues will be kept to the fore.
Management Committee Member (representing the UK)
– COST Action CA21143 – Transnational Family Dynamics in Europe (TraFaDy) (2021-2026)
Action CA21143 – COST & COST – Transnational Family Dynamics in Europe (EN) | Odisee
Description: This Action aims to deepen the knowledge of the growing, rapidly changing phenomenon and dynamics of transnational families (TNF) by bringing together researchers and stakeholders from different disciplines and countries to address the need for transnational insights and to formulate policy and practice-oriented recommendations with an impact on international, national, sub-local and local practices. This Action will closely monitor current trends in migration, technology and politics, and engage in an intensive dialogue with policy and practitioners, and, thus, address the need to deepen and broaden scientific and policy understanding of TNF.
Working group member (representing the UK)
– COST Action CA20137,
Making Young Researchers’ Voices Heard for Gender Equality (VOICES) (2020-2025)
https://gendervoices.eu/ & https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA20137/
Description: The main goal of this Action is thus to increase the visibility of inequalities faced by young researchers from a gender perspective and to promote a sustainable dialogue between young researchers and stakeholders in the research ecosystem at the systemic level (European & national policy-makers) and at the institutional level (senior researchers, academic managers) by creating a community of gender equality practitioners composed of various stakeholders (young researchers, independent researchers, academic managers, organizations) across Europe. The Action has among its outcomes: training schools for young researchers, scientific publications by young researchers, recommendations & guidelines for academics and policy-makers.
Working group member (representing the UK)
– COST Action CA20115,
European Network on International Student Mobility: Connecting Research and Practice (ENIS) (2020-2025)
https://www.enisnetwork.com/ & https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA20115/
Description: The Action brings together established researchers, early-career investigators (ECIs) and PhD students from different scientific disciplines, countries, and research communities as well as stakeholders from international offices, international student and study abroad organizations, and different policy levels. The Action will offer comparative and practical insights into ISM dynamics by bringing fragmented knowledge together, with the main aim of generating new interdisciplinary and innovative empirical perspectives on the phenomenon and translating these into tangible recommendations for stakeholders.
Working group member (representing the UK)
– COST Action CA21131
Enabling multilingual eye-tracking data collection for human and machine language processing research
(MultiplEYE) (2021-2026)
https://multipleye.eu/ & https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA21131/
Description: The MultiplEYE COST Action aims to foster an interdisciplinary network of research groups working on collecting eye tracking data from reading in many languages. The goal is to support the development of a large multilingual eye tracking corpus and enable researchers to collect data by sharing infrastructure and their knowledge between various fields, including linguistics, psychology, and computer science. This data collection can then be used to study human language processing from a psycholinguistic perspective as well as to improve and evaluate computational language processing from a machine learning perspective.
WG5 Co-Lead (representing the UK)
– COST Action CA21107,
Work inequalities in later life redefined by digitalization (DIGI-net) (2021-2026)
Action CA21107 – COST & https://lnu.se/en/research/research-projects/projekt-work-inequalities-in-later-life-redefined-by-digitalization/
Description: The aim of this Action is to overcome critical gaps in conceptual innovation on the influence of digitalization on work inequalities in later life, in order to address the research-policy disconnect and tackle work inequalities in later life redefined by digitalisation. The Action will enhance scientific knowledge by integrating the different disciplines and schools of thought, by developing collaborations with public policy officials, international policy bodies, non-academic professionals, civil society NGOs, trade unions, management of organisations and older workers themselves. Expected deliverables include:
a) the creation of a web-site; that will act as a platform for the Action and become an international ‘hub’ for the study of ageing at work in the era of digitalization, by sharing and publishing knowledge, connecting researchers, stakeholders and activists in the field;
b) the creation of a depository database of scientific measures and tools for the assessment of inequalities and challenges of aging and digitalization, as well as for good practices. Policy reports will be posted in order to make links outside the research community to address policy makers and stakeholders;
c) the facilitation of research and dissemination events, including Short Term Scientific Missions (STSMs) and scientific Training Schools (TS) for Young Researchers and Innovators (YRIs) and established researchers, public conferences and policy workshops hosting experts and relevant stakeholders; and
d) a series of publications including scientific reports, conference proceedings, academic publications, collaborative recommendation papers derived from Action Working Groups, and an edited book.
Working group member (representing the UK)
– COST Action CA19122,
European Network For Gender Balance in Informatics (EUGAIN) (2019-2024)
https://eugain.eu/ & Action CA19122 – COST
Description: Women are underrepresented in Informatics (Computer Science, Computer Engineering, Computing, ICT) at all levels, from undergraduate and graduate studies to participation and leadership in academia and industry. Increasing female representation in the field is a grand challenge for academics, policymakers, and society as a whole. Although the problem is evident, progress has been invariably slow, in spite of all the momentum and impulse for change happening across Europe. The main aim of this COST Action is to improve gender balance in Informatics through the creation and strengthening of a truly multi-cultural European network of academics working on the forefront of the efforts in their countries, institutions and research communities.
We will be building on their knowledge, experiences, struggles, successes, and failures, learning and sharing what has worked and how it could be transferred to other institutions and countries. Among other outcomes, the Action will provide the academic community, policymakers, industry and other stakeholders with recommendations and guidelines to address the following key challenges: (i) How to have more girls choosing Informatics as their higher education studies and profession; (ii) How to retain female students and assure they finish their studies and start successful careers in the field; (iii) How to encourage more female Ph.D. and postdoctoral researchers to remain in the academic career and apply for professorships in Informatics departments; (iv) How to support and inspire young women in their careers and help them to overcome the main hurdles that prevent women to reach senior positions.
Dissemination Grants Coordinator (representing the UK)
– COST Action CA18123,
European Family Support Network (EUROFAMNet) (2018-2023)
EurofamNet: The European Family Support Network | Eurofamnet
Description: EurofamNet is a pan-European family support network focused on family support policies and practices. The Network aims to inform family policies and practices towards the ultimate goal of ensuring children’s rights and families’ well-being. EurofamNet is doing so by building collaborations between researchers, practitioners, policy-makers, children and families, public and private agencies, and general society. EurofamNet is working as a bottom-up, evidence-based, multidisciplinary network.
Working Group member (representing the UK) – COST Action CA18231,
Multi-task, multilingual, multi-modal language generation(Multi3generation) (2018-2023)
Description: Multi3Generation aims to foster an interdisciplinary network of research groups working on different aspects of language generation (LG). We frame LG broadly as the set of tasks where the ultimate goal involves generating language. In contrast to the more classical definition of NLG, this also includes tasks not concerned with LG in an immediate sense, but that could obviously inform or improve LG models. The EU has recently published its Digital Single Market priority Language Technologies and Big Data, which aims to promote the intelligent use and management of data sources in Europe to facilitate the provision of innovative, commercial and social solutions. Our proposed action will look into how different data sources can be aggregated and exploited and how novel ML methods can assist in automating the management of data sources as well as the extraction of important information.
In addition to this, Multi3Generation is related to the Automated Translation policy which aims to provide innovative solutions for cross-lingual access to digital services by addressing the translation workload. Multi3Generation also speaks to the concerns raised in the recent European Parliament resolution on Language Equality in the Digital Age (2018/2028(INI)), which is premised on the necessity of a multilingual orientation in the development of language technologies. NLP, NLG and HCI are also included as part of key strategies for R&D plans in other countries outside the EU.
Working Group member (representing the UK) – COST Action CA19135,
Connecting Education and Research Communities
for an Innovative Resource Aware Society (CERCIRAS) (2019-2023)
CERCIRAS – ICT COST ACTION CA19135
Description: Parallel computing platforms have revolutionised the hardware landscape by providing high-performance, low-energy, and specialized (viz. heterogeneous) processing capabilities to a variety of application domains, including mobile, embedded, data-centre and high-performance computing. However, to leverage their potential, system designers must strike a difficult balance in the apportionment of resources to the application components, striving to avoid under- or over-provisions against worst-case utilisation profiles. The entanglement of hardware components in the emerging platforms and the complex behaviour of parallel applications raise conflicting resource requirements, more so in smart, (self-)adaptive and autonomous systems. This scenario presents the hard challenge of understanding and controlling, statically and dynamically, the trade-offs in the usage of system resources, (time, space, energy, and data), also from the perspective of the development and maintenance efforts.
Making resource-usage trade-offs at specification, design, implementation, and run time requires profound awareness of the local and global impact caused by parallel threads of applications on individual resources. Such awareness is crucial for academic researchers and industrial practitioners across all European and COST member countries, and, therefore, a strategic priority. Reaching this goal requires acting at two levels: (1) networking otherwise fragmented research efforts towards more holistic views of the problem and the solution; (2) leveraging appropriate educational and technology assets to improve the understanding and management of resources by the academia and industry of underperforming economies, in order to promote cooperation inside Europe and achieve economical and societal benefits.
Working Group member (representing the UK) – COST Action CA19142,
Leading Platform for European Citizens, Industries, Academia and Policymakers in Media Accessibility (LEAD-ME) (2019-2023)
Description: The proposed LEAD-ME COST Action aims to help all stakeholders in the field of Media Accessibility and cross-cutting topics (e.g. AI and Interactive Technologies) in Europe to meet the legal milestones requested by the recently passed European legislation. Researchers, engineers, scholars as well as businesses and policy makers will be empowered by LEAD-ME with a common and unique platform which, during the next 48 months, will collect, create, share, and disseminate innovative technologies and solutions, best practices and guidelines, and promote them. Furthermore, it will contribute towards existing and new standards on Media Accessibility among 28 European or associated countries. To do so, the LEAD-ME network will make use of the specific tools of the COST Action: meetings and working group meetings; educational institutes, short-term scientific mission; dissemination activities.
LEAD-ME will boost a cultural change and the creation of a new mindset when designing tools for professional and private activities for all European citizens of all abilities and disabilities. This COST Action is strongly needed to avoid further fragmentation in the European accessibility scene, challenging the European Single Digital Market idea. The uneven take-up in Europe is the direct result of the complex nature of Media, the background technology involved, the fast-changing technology and business models, and the wealth of EU languages. This counts for both the market and research.
Working Group member (representing the UK) – COST Action CA21166,
Social Sciences and Humanities for Transformation and Climate Resilience (SHiFT) (2021-2026)
Home | Shift Cost (shift-cost.eu)
Description: SHiFT proposes the creation of a transdisciplinary Hub to address existing challenges in advancing timely societal transformations in the face of climate change. It includes the delivery of a plan of action-focused missions, initiatives, and digital content creation. The Hub comprises a core group of SSH transdisciplinary researchers and practitioners and their extended networks with a focus on unfolding the benefits of engaging with transformation in practice ideas across different social, political, economic, environmental, and technological contexts. Recognising from the onset that these categories have blurred demarcations in practice and exploring the nexus between these and their impact on different systems and regimes.
Management Committee member (representing the UK) – COST Action CA21166,
A Multilingual Repository of Phraseme Constructions in Central and Eastern European Languages (PhraConRep) (2021-2026)
CA22115 – PhraConRep Cost Action
Description: To communicate, language users must not only respect the grammatical rules of a given language; they must also have knowledge about which words typically belong together. This means that they must know how to combine words and grammatical forms to create specific meanings in specific contexts. When learning a new language, the focus is usually on the teaching of grammatical rules and vocabulary.
Verbal routines and other kinds of patterned speech, such as idioms or proverbs, have also become a natural part of modern foreign language teaching. The PhraConRep Action targets a class of idiomatic word combinations that have been much less of a focus not only in teaching, but also in research. The patterns in question will be referred to as Phraseme Constructions (PhraCons) and are defined as patterns of idiomatic word combinations consisting of fixed lexical elements (“anchors”) and empty slots for fillers. Both lexical anchors and lexical fillers must meet certain criteria specific to the given PhraCon.
PhraConRep coordinates contrastive empirical research on PhraCons and establishes a platform for conducting joint research on the classification, description, storage, translation and teaching of PhraCons of Middle and Eastern European languages. Its main objective is to provide a multilingual repository of PhraCons. On the basis of two pivot languages, German and Russian, equivalents of PhraCons are established in at least nine Slavic languages and Hungarian. The repository will be a unique tool for language learners, teachers, and other stakeholders, such as professional translators, involved in the study of these languages.
Working Group member (representing the UK) – COST Action CA19104,
Advancing Social Inclusion through Technology and EmPowerment (a-STEP) (2019-2024)
Home – a-Step (a-step-action.eu)
Description: Social inclusion is an important element of well-being for people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and/or Intellectual Disability (ID). Research has highlighted that social inclusion is facilitated through access to education and employment. Despite this, people with ASD and/or ID have low rates of participation in these domains.
Research has demonstrated that Assistive Technology (AT) shows great promise in increasing participation in education and employment. Notwithstanding recent technological advances, there are low rates of adoption of AT throughout Europe by service providers, educators, employers and policymakers. There are several areas of unmet need including: high abandonment rates of AT, lack of inclusion of people with ASD and/or ID in the research process, lack of interdisciplinary and intersectoral collaboration and poor match between technology and the individual with ASD and/or ID.
Working Group member (representing the UK) – COST Action CA22139,
Justice to youth language needs: human rights undermined by an invisible disadvantage (Y-JustLang) (2022-2027)
Description: This Action addresses the lack of consistent policies to establish the language abilities that children and adolescents need to possess in order to participate in justice proceedings effectively. The journey through criminal justice is based on highly verbal processes that require a level of verbal ability that is unlikely among young offenders for several reasons: firstly, research in the English-speaking countries (severely limited in other European countries) shows that the prevalence of language impairment is up to six times higher in the population of youth offenders; if undiagnosed and untreated, it increases the risk of re-offending.
Furthermore, linguistics research demonstrates that some syntactic abilities are still under development during (pre)puberty, and that the abilities to connect language to context may be underdeveloped even after the age of 18. In addition, ability to handle structurally complex language is low when academic attainment is low, which is common among young offenders. However, there are no procedures to establish language ability across populations to date and lack of awareness pervades the justice systems.
Even where screening for language difficulties exists, it is not sufficiently nuanced to capture issues with the most common structures found in justice interchanges and no attention is paid to the needs of children from different education backgrounds, with disabilities, who are multilingual, or who are deaf or hearing impaired. To ensure protection of human rights of this vulnerable population, an Action to assess the situation at European transnational level and to propose specific measures to identify language needs is urgent.
Working Group member (representing the UK) – COST Action CA22126,
European Network On Lexical Innovation (ENEOLI) (2022-2027)
Eneoli – European Network on Lexical Inovation
Description: Neology is the study of lexical innovation in natural languages, in multiple contexts and over time. Lexical innovation is a massive, permanent and universal phenomenon. From a strictly linguistic point of view, the study of neology “contributes to a better understanding of the lexical system of a given language and its evolution” (Sablayrolles 2019: 7), while from an extralinguistic point of view, “the inventory of neologisms also gives much information about language communities in their material lives and social representations” (ibid.). The key challenges addressed by the network may be summarised thus:
1) Define the core terminology of neology conceived as a discipline through the creation of a born-digital specialised multilingual glossary (none exist currently) in order to facilitate research on an international scale;
2) Adapt digital methodologies and tools to identify and account for lexical innovation; thanks to the involvement of institutions, experts and the general public (crowdsourcing), increase the awareness of lexical creations and their societal implications, foster creativity in mother tongues, clarity in institutional communication and in science;
3) Carry out comparative studies on lexical innovation in European languages, with a particular focus on borrowings and their equivalents;
4) Provide specific training in neology for translators, editors, journalists, technical writers and teachers through a specific protocol that could be replicated for any European language. Conferences, training schools and short-term scientific missions are also planned in order to achieve the aforementioned goals.
Working Group member (representing the UK) – COST Action CA22145,
Computational Techniques for Tabletop Games Heritage (GameTable) (2022-2027)
GameTable • COST ACTION CA22145 – Computational Techniques for Tabletop Games Heritage
Description:
Games have been a research topic across many disciplines that have long been disconnected from one another. In computer science and mathematics, games have been used as testbeds for the development of state-of-the-art methods in economics, engineering, and Artificial Intelligence. Archaeologists, historians, and anthropologists have examined the motivations behind human play and its social implications on the individual and societal levels. Games have also long been the subject of pedagogical development, and are increasingly becoming recognized as part of the intangible cultural heritage of humanity. Nevertheless, much of the heritage of games around the world has been lost due to colonialism, imperialism, and commercialisation.
The GameTable Action aims to create an international and interdisciplinary network of scholars and stakeholders from all career stages across academia, industry, and heritage institutions to inspire methodologies and applications on how to use game AI to study, reconstruct, and preserve the intangible cultural heritage of games. More holistic methodologies will be achieved by developing more human-like AI techniques, using them to analyse mathematical properties of games, and combining them with game-theoretic models, and guiding them with knowledge of games of the past and a cross-cultural understanding of human gameplay. These collaborations will include conferences, workshops, and other cross-disciplinary interactions that will produce publications and digital tools to advance the theoretical and practical applications of research on games. From this, we will develop sophisticated methods for the preservation of games as a form of ancient and modern cultural heritage and game-centric educational programs.
Equality Coordinator (representing the UK) – COST Action CA2118,
Platform Work Inclusion Living Lab (P-WILL) (2021-2026)
https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA21118/
Description:
The platform economy (PE) has accelerated following the COVID-19 outbreak. Although several PE models exist, the PE predominant model is mostly characterised by poor working conditions, low pay, lack of social protection for workers, and increasing gender, racial and socioeconomic inequalities.
The main objective of the Platform Work Inclusion Living Lab (P-WILL) is to build a pan-european interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary multistakeholder network including policymakers, industry leaders, civil society organisations, designers, researchers, and the main initiatives happening at the international level, to foster the upsurge of alternative scenarios in the frame of platform work.
P-WILL promotes the PE intersectional gender perspective and inclusion through increased well-being, economic justice, and rights for the traditionally excluded collectives (TEC) while aligning the PE with The EU Pillar of Social Rights and SDGs.
Working Group member (representing the UK) – COST Action CA22101,
Gender Equality Co-Ordinator
Cultural Expertise Junior Network (K-Peritia) (2022-2027)
https://www.cost.eu/actions/CA22101/
Description:
K-Peritia proposes an unprecedented network of junior experts who have preliminary experience as experts in court, members of the legal professions who are interested in cultural expertise, senior scholars with experience of expert witnessing and representatives of key international organisations, NGOs and capacity building institutions. The challenges of K-Peritia are:
1) developing an international network for bridging the gap between the supply and the demand for professional cultural expertise which overcomes elitist and expensive features;
2) enabling the professional engagement of junior experts; and
3) digitalisation of the knowledge on cultural expertise.
These three challenges will articulate on a newly designed transdisciplinary platform: a multilingual, open access, and cross-jurisdictional socio-legal database. The Action will foster transdisciplinary collaboration among the various disciplines of the social sciences; will establish cultural expertise more firmly as a research category in all the countries of this network, foster a better collaboration among experts and the legal professions and encourage the professional engagement of junior experts, and create the instruments for the adoption of cultural expertise which are respectful of the ethics and the deontologies of the involved professions. The deliverables of K-Peritia will be the launch of Cultural Expertise Digital Network including a training manual of use-cases for an extended use of the socio-legal database; a system of experts’ accreditation; training and capacity building module; a volume on cultural expertise and conflict resolution; and country specific policy-making guidelines on the adoption of cultural expertise also including a guide for non-discriminatory language in litigation.
Working Group member (representing the UK) – COST Action CA23147,
Global Network on Large-Scale, Cross-domain and Multilingual Open Knowledge Graphs (GOBLIN) (2023-2028)
https://e-services.cost.eu/action/CA23147
Description:
WHAT: The ultimate goal of the Action is to increase and enhance the public open knowledge available in Europe and beyond. The aim is to provide a large-scale, high quality, cross-domain and multilingual knowledge graph technology that is free to use, reuse, and redistribute.
HOW: By bringing people and communities interested in knowledge graphs technologies to work together on topics related to knowledge graphs engineering, knowledge graphs management and knowledge graphs utilization.
WHY: To align and consolidate the research results on open knowledge graphs, and strengthen the links between the involved scientific communities and public and industrial stakeholders. This will result in a comprehensive, open, multilingual and structured knowledge resources. Such resources can aid the creation of innovative businesses and services that deliver social and commercial value.
FOR WHOM: For scientific communities and public and industrial stakeholders, who develop open knowledge graph solutions for domains, such as cultural heritage, food and agriculture, life sciences, and news and media.
BY WHOM: A network consisting of researchers and innovators affiliated with academic institutes, enterprises, open knowledge networks and initiatives with complementary research and/or business focus and expertise in knowledge technologies.
Working Group member (representing the UK) – COST Action CA23129,
Peace Research Community Europe (PEACE) (2023-2028)
https://e-services.cost.eu/action/CA23129
Description:
The world currently faces a number of significant challenges to peace and security. Violent conflict and related victims doubled over the last decade. The Global Peace Index, trying to quantify peace on a global level, deteriorated for the ninth consecutive year. The war in Ukraine and the new levels of violence in the Israel-Palestine conflict raise fundamental questions on how to prevent violent conflict from erupting. Moreover, climate change and polarization also pose grave challenges to peace and security, even in more ‘peaceful’ contexts. Building peace, reducing insecurity and preventing violent conflict demands us to fundamentally rethink peace.
That is why this PEACE Action unites a trans-European and interdisciplinary research community that expands and strengthens a network of peace and conflict research centres and researchers from across Europe. The main challenge for the PEACE Action is to improve our understanding of the current challenges to peace and security on the European continent and beyond, thereby inspiring new research, policy and practice. The focus areas will be on Peace & Climate, Feminist Peace, Peace & Emerging Technologies, Local Peace and a new Peace and Security Architecture in Europe. In addition, the network will support a new generation of peace and conflict researchers in developing their careers.
Working Group member (representing the UK) – COST Action CA23113,
Peace Climate change impacts on mental health in Europe (CliMent) (2023-2028)
https://e-services.cost.eu/action/CA23113
Description:
Mental health challenges are a growing concern across Europe, while climate change presents an unpredictable and far-reaching risk. Despite this, the connection between climate change and mental health remains underexplored, particularly in terms of individual and societal impacts, as well as potential interventions.
CliMent is dedicated to:
Enhancing our understanding of how climate change affects mental well-being in Europe.
Identifying and refining coping strategies.
Implementing short-term behavioral interventions to drive societal change.
Developing long-term strategies to support sustainability.
By bringing together experts from across Europe and fostering collaboration across disciplines, CliMent aims to:
Strengthen the scientific foundation on climate-related mental health effects.
Support career development for mental health researchers and practitioners.
Empower citizens, educators, and policymakers through Communities of Practice, equipping them with the tools to address the mental health challenges posed by climate change.
CliMent as a Collaborative Effort for a Resilient Future
CliMent leverages the expertise of a European network, bringing together diverse disciplines to address the mental health challenges posed by climate change. The initiative’s expected outcomes include:
Advancing scientific knowledge on climate-related mental health impacts.
Supporting career development for mental health professionals.
Empowering citizens, educators, and policymakers through Communities of Practice, fostering resilience in the face of climate-related challenges.
By bridging research, policy, and action, CliMent contributes to sustaining individual and societal well-being in an era of climate change.
Working Group member (representing the UK) – COST Action CA23105,
Language Plurality in Europe’s Changing Media Sphere (PLURILINGMEDIA) (2023-2028)
https://e-services.cost.eu/action/CA23105
Description:
Protecting Europe’s linguistic plurality and increasing multilingualism is a clear aim of the European Union and the Council of Europe, balanced against the concern of increasing dominance of larger languages – most prominently English. The challenge is also present in the media which is facing increased global competition and changing consumption trends, threatening media spheres in official national languages and even more so for regional and minority languages.
PLURILINGMEDIA intends to advance collaboration and bring coherence to the field of European media from the perspective of language plurality, encouraging involvement of scholars in related disciplines and facilitating knowledge transfer between academics and practitioners. This incorporates the digitalisation shifts affecting consumption and provision of media, providing opportunities and threats to journalists, as well as influencing policymakers, educators and other stakeholders. Academics working on these topics mostly work on singular linguistic spheres and there remains a deficiency of knowledge transfer across the dimensions of academic discipline, career-stage, geography and industry.
Spreading instances of good practice will be of particular relevance to smaller linguistic spheres and lesser-funded media outlets, who may be able to benefit from certain elements of digitalisation. Moreover, involving individual content creators with institutional actors will also bring further plurality to media spheres, aiming to determine the benefits of this convergence of actors on the same platforms and share methods of reaching younger audiences. Through all of this, PLURILINGMEDIA plans to demonstrate the plurality of a given regional or minority language sphere, empowering use of the language through media.
Working Group member (representing the UK) – COST Action CA23117,
Critical Pedagogies, Inclusive Art Forms and Alternative Barometers for Urban Sustainability (CIRCUL’ARTs) (2023-2028)
https://e-services.cost.eu/action/CA23117
Description:
CIRCUL’ARTs develops an innovative methodology to stimulate the emergence of solutions towards more circular and sustainable cities, based on a ‘dynamic ecology of knowledge’. This implies new ways of co-creating knowledge, sharing it and transforming it into action, orientating our learning towards more practical action. Most of all, this new methodology consists in stepping out of a Euro-centric perspective and taking into consideration plural voices and needs, ancestral and indigenous knowledge, creative micro-strategies developed at a local level – a body of information that has remained hitherto unconsidered.
We envision bringing this knowledge into a global circulation, appealing to artistic practice – as a form of creating information exchange in a participative and creative way and of producing topic solutions. Art, and the de-colonisation of thought and knowledge will allow us to develop a methodology that is in itself sustainable and circular.
This innovative methodology will be applied to 3 working areas in urban circular economies, according to the analysis of particular case-studies (in the locations of our members and partners) . Our project is therefore organised around 6 thematic working groups (corresponding to our three working areas plus 3 creative methodologies), and a 7th one that brings together recommendations for the development of innovative creative methodologies in the field of circular economies and disseminates them:
1. Plural schooling and critical pedagogies
2. Urban rituals, performances, street theater, music
3. Urban installations and gathering points
4. Innovation through creative and circular technologies
5. Connecting ‘natures’ in the urban context
6. Dissemination and recommendations
Working Group member (representing the UK) – COST Action CA23114,
Regaining linkage? Digital technologies improving civic engagement, political organisations and democracy (RELINK²) (2023-2028)
https://e-services.cost.eu/action/CA23114
Description:
Working Group member (representing the UK) – COST Action CA23153,
Digital Mental Health for Young People (YouthDMH) (2023-2028)
https://e-services.cost.eu/action/CA23153
Description:
Working Group member (representing the UK) – COST Action CA23118,
Futures-oriented Governance of Outer Space: Towards Peace, Equity, and Environmental Integrity (FOGOS) (2023-2028)
https://e-services.cost.eu/action/CA23118
Description:
