ETICA, Center for Ethics in Public Affairs at the American University of Armenia, under the direction of ERA Chair Professor Maria Baghramian, will become a national hub for analysing and researching key ethical issues in the public sphere. ETICA will carry out its activities under the four pillars of Research and Internationalisation, Training and Capacity Building, Outreach and Public Engagement, and Structural Reform, focusing on the following objectives: to internationalise research through a collaborative research project on Trust and Hope in a Time of Poly-crises; to create long-term research and training resources in ethics in public affairs; to offer training opportunities in professional, applied and research ethics; to engage the public in participatory deliberations on key ethical issues; to generate policy briefs informed by its theoretical, empirical and participatory findings; to encourage reform in research management at institutional and sectoral levels; and to assist in strengthening international research funding applications. ETICA will have a lasting impact on the development of research and training in public ethics in a small country with limited resources. By recruiting an excellent team of researchers, the Center will also contribute to revitalizing research and publication in the humanities. Through its training and capacity building activities, ETICA will promote the development of codes of professional conduct in research and governance. By engaging with the general public, in the course of town halls, youth juries and deliberative mini publics, ETICA will strengthen the practice of open and reasoned discourse on issues of public significance in a post-Soviet country steadily moving towards democratisation. ETICA will introduce changes in research management, research ethics and funding application governance that will hasten the integration of AUA, and ultimately the Republic of Armenia, in the EU and the global research community.

BOOST/Boosting Armenian Universities Internationalization Strategy & Marketing/ is a three-year national project under the priority of Governance Reform EACEA N 35/2012, 6th call and Structural measures action.The wider objective of the Project is to foster and promote further internationalization of Armenian Higher Education through development of national and institutional policy framework and tools.The specific objectives of the project are:• Development of national policy framework and tools for facilitating internationalization practices in Armenian HE.• Creation of a National Platform and online tools for mapping and benchmarking internationalization processes in Higher Education.• Build capacities of ICO staff of HEIs, MoES and social partners on strategic management, marketing and cultural challenges as well as implementation of credit mobility, ensuring holistic approach to internationalization management issues.• Create or enhance ICO resources and service-oriented centers at the Armenian HEIs, including development of strategic &marketing plans and tools.The objectives are realized through well planned activities at institutional, regional and national levels including workshops and trainings on strategic planning, management of international relations and structural improvements at partner institutions. The results of the national project are broadly disseminated among other higher educational institutions. The European partners from Spain, Sweden, Portugal and Estonia has brought in to the project the richness of their strong traditions in strategizing, marketing and enhancing international relations.

OTTERS will aim at promoting and scaling up successful citizen science (CS) initiatives in the marine and freshwater domains via 1) accelerating the co-creation of standards in data collection, semantics, data quality, and data management making sure to abide by all ethical and legal standards; 2) promoting and scaling up successful water-related CS initiatives by clustering them under co-designed Spring-to-Sea campaigns to foster agency and increase ocean literacy; 3) connecting the citizen-generated data to other EU-funded projects and portals, including the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet) and Digital Twins of the Ocean (ILIAD) to ensure the accessibility and reuse of the data and abide by all FAIR principles; 4) demonstrating the effectiveness of citizen science in participatory research, environmental monitoring and changing people’s behaviors to ensure the sustainability of water ecosystems and reach the goals of the EU Water Framework Directive and UN Decade of the Ocean.

INCLUSION (Development and Implementation of Social Dimension Strategies at HEIs in Armenia and BiH through Cross-regional Peer Learning) is a three-year cross-regional joint project under EAC/A04/2015 call and Key Action 2 - Capacity Building in the Field of Higher Education. The wider objective is to mobilize the HE capacity in Armenia and BiH in contirbuting to the implementation of the social dimension (SD) strategies through capitalizing on knowledge transfer and cross-regional cooperation. The specific objectives are: - Capacity building of HE sector for designing and implementing SD strategies; - Development of a harmonized approach to the implementation of SD strategies in line with country specific objectives; - Fostering access to/participation in and completion of higher education for persons from vulnerable/ underrepresented groups.The project targets the major problems in Armenia and BiH related to the promotion of SD strategies through broader involvement of HEIs. The principle outputs and outcomes are:- National level guidelines on development and operationalization of SD strategies- Institutional level master plans and mechanisms to implement SD strategies related to fostering access to, participation in and completion of HE for students from vulnerable and underrepresented groups;- Reviewed roles, functions and ongoing initiatives at HEIs in promoting SD strategies;- Capacity building of HEIs and respective government authorities for operationalization of SD strategies; - Ensuring resources for inclusive teaching and learning;- Capacity building materials to raise awareness of high school pupils & teachers on equal access to higher education and trained highschool teachers.The cross-regional nature of the project ensures learning from existing practices, successful experience exchange, long-standing cooperation between the two regions and EU partners – with a major aim of promoting voluntary convergence with EU developments.