"Current situation: Children come already into contact with a variety of media in early childhood. In addition to classic media such as children's books, radio play cassettes, television and radio, more and more new media such as smart phones, tablets and iPad are entering the children's room. Interacting with the Internet has become a part of the children’s everyday life. Children's worlds are the media worlds. Children bring their ""media trails"" into their facilities and thus they should be accompanied by pedagogically educated adults both in the daycare centres and in the family environment in the processing of their experiences. At the same time, conscious handling of the children regarding the media in the daycare centres has to be strengthened. In order to make the children aware of the usefulness and the effect of media, we need specialists in the kindergarten schools who have practical knowledge of the subject of media education and the ability to implement this within their pedagogical work with the children. It is a fact that this kind of staff is not sufficiently available and thus there are very often strong barriers to use these media by pedagogically trained staff. This is where the project starts. To achieve this, a target group-oriented qualification of the pedagogical staff is necessary. There is also a pool of materials, such as guidance, methodologies, e-learning offers or practical examples that are essential in order to eliminate the barriers to the children's targeted media education that the daycare staff can use. The project is focusing on rural areas, which lack specialised staff and they have at their disposal poor pedagogical material and consequently information technology conditions tighten the problem. Project theme & objectives: The objectives of the project are the creation of innovative solutions for the development of media pedagogical competences using ICT and the acquisition of digital skills of the specialists in child daycare centres and similar establishments, especially in rural regions. The teaching of knowledge aims at applying innovative methods and pedagogical approaches to educate children how to use digital media. Substantial synergies can be used through international cooperation. Different levels, approaches and methods of solution in the partner countries can be transferred. This is particularly possible due to the fact that the IT platforms are essentially the same in the participating countries and are bound to lead to transnational sustainable innovations. The project responds to the fact that children's worlds are also media worlds through the use of tablets, smart phones, PCs and the like. Specialists in institutions need practical suggestions for media education in educational concepts and concrete activities with children. Rural areas are disadvantaged as educational places, in particular in the ICT sector, because equipment and, first of all, specialists are few and far between. ICT itself is important for the quality of life of rural areas. The disengagement of regions and the exclusion of social groups are threatening. All rural European regions face similar problems. Intellectual Outputs 1. Creation of a requirements catalog based on an analysis 2. Development of a training and further education concept with a manual, which contains learning contents, learning objectives, method descriptions, sequence plans and instructions for the implementation of learning units. This is not yet the case, especially for this type of region. International exchange will lead to added value of the innovative character of this output. 3. In addition to the manual, special e-learning user tools will be developed and made available for transfer as IO (consulting and coaching methods). 4. The collection of successful application examples of IT-based learning in different application fields will be a relevant transfer module (new forms of education transfer). 5. A suitable method for evaluating, validating and crediting learning services, which will be specified for the regional conditions, will be made by means of online-based test methods for educators. 6. Development of a multilingual Internet portal for the allocation of the IO's, but also other offers such as e-learning, blogs of the current development, competence checks, information, FAQs and so on. Target groups: A direct target group are the nursery school teachers in the children's daycare centres and similar establishments. In addition, the professional actors or institutions involved in early childhood / preschool education (e.g. administrators) should be included in the transfer and thus benefit. This also applies to institutions for the guidance of professionals."

Europe is at the beginning of a major transition to a low carbon economy and is experiencing substantial growth in the expansion of renewable energy generating capacity. However, parallel to this technological investment, many Member States are witnessing increasing levels of local opposition to individual projects, particularly for wind energy, which is now the cheapest form of energy generation. This has a range of consequences including increased deployment costs/delays, increased regulatory demands, reduced market support and highlights a major social challenge for the energy transition. In response to this, MISTRAL aims to nurture a new generation of researchers who can effectively evaluate the complexity of social acceptance issues facing the deployment of renewable energy infrastructure and propose innovative solutions in a variety of research, government and business contexts. It will do this by fostering a vibrant inter-disciplinary environment to change the way we understand and respond to declining social acceptance of renewable energy infrastructure and engage a wider range of inter-sectoral stakeholders to develop innovative solutions. MISTRAL will also provide an innovative training environment where young researchers can develop advanced skills in research and transferable skills, benefit form a range of diverse secondment experiences and debate current issues with some of the world leading researchers in the field, in order to develop advanced capacities for progressing Europe’s energy transition.

Despite the global COVID-19 pandemic, Europe continues to be a major destination for transnational migrants, notably from Asia and Africa. The way in which this phenomenon has been unfolding underlines the urgent need to further conceptualise transnational migration by analysing the decision-making of aspiring (re)migrants. This scholarly enterprise is critically important as mainstream migration theories put more of a focus on broader social processes and dynamics, thereby overlooking the human aspects of migration. Basing itself on several migration theories in various disciplines, this proposal adopts a framework that humanises research on (non-)migration decision-making, i.e. highlighting its human aspects in three ways: engendering, decolonising and situating the analysis in temporal, psychological, relational and social contexts. As a case study, this research project will examine the decision-making of aspiring (re)migrants from selected Southeast and East Asian countries (China, Japan, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam) to and within selected EU member countries (Belgium, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Finland). These migrants are oriented towards the EU labour markets where they are concentrated in ethnic niches. Employing qualitative and participatory research methodologies, the study will map the extent to which spatial mobility policies at the EU and national levels take into account aspiring (re)migrants’ behaviour, identify the micro- and meso-level drivers of (re)migration aspiration and/or intention and determine the temporality of aspiring (re)migrants’ decision-making. The results of this project will provide concrete information as to how individuals’ migration decisions change over time and on the specific stage at which mobility policies are more likely to play a role in shaping migration outcomes, which will enhance EU migration policies.

The main objective of NEWSREEL project is to improve such skills of a new generation of European journalists that are required in the present media fields to be a credible and stable factor of the European democratic public debate who can benefit from the digital information ecosystem in order to make complex public issues understandable. To achieve this objective, NEWSREEL will make innovative learning materials and teaching programs Europe-wide available. Furthermore the project aims to facilitate the efficient international cooperation between university-based journalists ecosystems to: a) develop critical understanding of the breadth, depth and scope of credible journalism; b) help journalists reporting more credible stories, based on the more precise information with the help of computer-assisted reporting or data journalism . Putting data in a visual form may reveal patterns and insights that weren’t identifiable otherwise. In this way, the audience can understand better complex issues; c) develop new business strategies and models of journalism.The technical and economic development brought significant risks for journalism as well. By the weakening of the traditional forms of the exploitation of media products and services, the stable financial fundamentals of high-quality journalism have more or less disappeared; the weaker the media market of a country is, the higher the risk for financial problems of quality journalism.; d) establish collaborative journalism. Transnational team-working is a key element in the field of collaborative journalism. European cross-border investigations can improve the transparency of the European political and economic decision making and the expenses of the European public money. Moreover, the increasing complexity of journalism projects makes necessary the cooperation between experts of several fields, such as journalists, data journalists, IT experts and designers; e) be able to handle ethical challenges of the digital public sphere. Journalists still should provide credible information on the public issues, but they have to compete with a mass of non-professional, often inaccurate information, and fight against aggressive communication against particular social groups or their own performance. To handle these challenges, journalists should embed robust ethical norms into their work. The methodology used in the project's implementation phase is based on the following 7 steps process: 1. Mapping the journalism education and the needs of the stakeholders, 2. Developing syllabuses in order to embed the skills and tools concerned into the programs of journalism studies, 3. Developing electronic learning materials and teaching methods to increase the necessary new journalism skills, 4. Having courses at the participating universities as a pilot teaching activity, 5. Publishing a teacher’s guide that summarizes the professional and methodological content of the project, 6. Developing student career profiles, 7. Organizing an international student competition that aims implementing cross-border investigative journalism projects with visualized. NEWSREEL will be implemented by - the Department for Communication and Media Studies of the University of Pécs which has a strong focus on the social impact of the journalism in the research and education activity; - the Faculty of Journalism and Mass Communication University of Bucharest which has an academic offer, does research and develops activities in all the areas of the project; - ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon which has several post-graduation offers in the communication/journalism areas, and a specific one in Executive Media Management; - the Erich Brost Institute for International Journalism, an affiliated institute of TU Dortmund which has participated in several transnational research projects. In the long run, NEWSREEL will contribute to - the extending the journalism education to the new fields of the digital public discussion, - the improving of high-quality journalism, - the strengthening of the common European democratic public sphere by improving the collaborative and cross-border journalism that is able to elaborate and make tangible the big amount of available data, and that is based on a predictable business strategy and a firm ethical foundation.