With a bias towards participation and interactivity, the digital realm has created conditions to allow people to engage with life more playfully using everyday devices (e.g. computers, smartphones). Digital technology has also allowed alternate public spaces to be created, helping to re-imagine citizenship and activism (e.g. Facebook campaigns, e-petitions). One area where playful engagement in civic life has started to generate serious attention is, in the field of videogames and experimental games. A burgeoning 'Games for change' movement has emerged in the last decade, which has appropriated videogames to engage people, beyond entertainment. A growing number of artists, educationalists and activists are developing games that contend with personal, social and political subject matter: e.g. poverty (Cost of Life); immigration (Escape from Woomera); forced labour practices (Sweatshop); the fiscal crisis (Layoff); and the war on terror (September 12th), with the explicit intention of altering or affecting player opinion outside of the game world. The network will also focus on other emergent game platforms (e.g. Alternate Reality Games (ARGs) and Urban Games) that use digital technologies to create games, played online as well as in physical locations. These games allow immersive and interactive storytelling experiences to play out across a range of (trans) media platforms. There are notable examples of these types of games engaging with social justice, community and humanitarian issues (e.g. World Without Oil; Raiders of the Lost Crown). They provide the network with a second key focus. Social change games tend to be the products of a burgeoning independent game scene, which represents the interests of those outside of 'big' industry - developing games that challenge normative, mainstream and commercial values. The network is keen to situate and undertsand these types of games within the scenes and sub-cultures that comprise the independent game industry. The recent emergence of global 'Game Collectives' (e.g. Copenhagen Games Collective; Invisible Playground in Berlin; The Larks in Manchester), which are developing a mix of 'on' and 'off-screen' games, are an important independent scene, to locate social change gaming. Not only do Game Collectives connect independent game communities to specific locales, they often foreground games and play as a means to explore notions of community, identity and togetherness. They provide the network with a third key focus area. Focusing on these key areas, this network will create an international multi-disciplinary community of practice. It will involve a range of core partners and associates with expertise in the key focs areas, representative of research and practice based perspectives (Manchester (MMU, The Larks, Madlab); the EU (The Copenhagen Games Collective; Utrecht University, University of Leuphana) and; North America (Tiltfactor at Dartmouth College; Diego de La Vega)), to explore the potentials of digital games as change agents. This will be done in collaboration with other participants, representing key stakeholder groups. Working collaboratively as a community of practice, the network will host a variety of activities (e.g. conferences; seminars; meetings; open-space workshops and game jams) to allow participants; academics, game developers, community practitioners, activists and third sector bodies, to explore and develop the potentials of digital games. It is anticipated that these activities will enable the network to generate key insights, identify areas for future research and investment as well as raise awareness around social change gaming and facilitate growth in the field within the UK and in the Manchester region, in particular.

PusH - Precarious Housing in Europe, aims to collect and discuss evidence on this growing European-wide phenomenon and make it available for teaching and dissemination in our partner institutions and beyond. The lack of decent, affordable housing and the occurrence of informal, illegal, or unsafe housing across all member states poses a threat to social inclusion in the EU, and hinders the mobility of EU citizens and the integration of third-country nationals. However, so far the issue has not been systematically taken up in curricula in HEIs across Europe. PusH addresses this gap by uniting seven partners from both older and younger EU member states enthusiastically committed to higher education and research that actively engage with societal needs, promote the co-creation of knowledge across disciplines, and bridge the research-practice divide. The consortium comprises HEIs involved in undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate education (Durham, Utrecht, Venice and Leuphana), the Danube-Krems University as a provider of continuing education for working professionals, as well as two partners from Bulgaria and Hungary as those countries where informal and precarious housing is a long-standing phenomenon. The Centre for Economic and Regional Studies of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (CERS HAS) in Budapest and the Open Society Institute in Sofia as a non-governmental, non-for-profit organization, have an established reputation for providing scientific evidence and policy advice on precarious housing and will facilitate the exchange, flow, and co-creation of knowledge on precarious housing within the PusH consortium and beyond.In order to reach its goals PusH will result in four textbook chapters on cross-cutting issues around precarious housing that will be used for teaching within the partner institutions and will be published open access for both students and teachers beyond this project. Each chapter will be made available as a corresponding e-learning module to reach a wider audience of students, lecturers and multipliers. All chapters and modules are going to be presented at separate multiplier events, in order to discuss and engage with associated partners such as local authorities, policy-makers, CBOs and NGOs. Moreover, PusH is going to organise two summer schools for students and lecturers from within our institutions. Apart from learning about the reasons for, and challenges of, precarious housing more generally, the first summer school in Bulgaria is going to allow students and lecturers to get first-hand impressions of informal housing of the Roma community, while the second summer school in Italy will draw from our partner’s experience and networks in the field of refugee migration and integration, both encouraging students and lecturers to engage with local practitioners.The PusH Strategic Partnership will therefore bring together a wealth of international expertise on precarious housing, migration, and urban change in Europe, along with partner third sector organisations, to co-create accessible and engaging resources for students and practitioners across Europe and to promote widespread understanding of precarious housing as an urgent political issue of our time.

There are around 1900 active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) in use, yet the environmental risks of only a small proportion of these has been assessed. This calls for pragmatic science-based approaches for prioritising existing APIs in terms of their environmental risk. Such approaches could also be used pro-actively, i.e. to identify environmental concerns earlier in the drug development process, thereby contributing to a more sustainable future. The overall aim of PREMIER is to deliver an API information and assessment system for characterising the potential environmental risks of APIs, including relevant human metabolites and environmental transformation products, based on minimal testing. This system will be designed to screen and prioritise legacy APIs for tailored environmental assessment; identify potential environmental hazards associated with APIs in development; and to make the available environmental data more accessible for all stakeholders. The system will be optimized and validated using case studies on approximately 25 APIs. PREMIER will realize its aim by combining world-leading research on the environmental risks of APIs with the principles of co-design and smart knowledge-based IT. Through this combination, we want to be more than a conventional research project. We want to ensure that the results of our ground-breaking research “work” address all the societal concerns about the potential risks posed by the presence of pharmaceuticals in the environment.

<< Background >>With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic came a sudden shift towards digital education that presented challenges as well as opportunities. The pandemic has made clear that 1) educational frameworks and tools need both flexibility and a pedagogical foundation; 2) the major challenges of our times are not restricted to and cannot be solved by single nations, disciplines or spheres of society alone, but need collaboration across supposed borders. Our project addresses these very needs by providing the framework and toolkit for an interactive and transformative blended learning experience that brings together different spheres of society and is based on Humanistic educational theories and pedagogical paradigms aimed at societal engagement and change: a blended MULTILOGUE. The Multilogue (ML) is a multi-perspective, project- and experience-based format characterized by a high degree of multi-stakeholder interaction and collaboration on societal challenges. Transferring the format to HE, we supplement the ML with a preceding phase of research carried out by students, and with challenge-based learning teams that accompany and follow the actual ML event. In addition to the innovation of connecting the ML to a HE context, we are breaking new ground by moving it into a blended framework, allowing for maximum flexibility in the combination of physical and digital participation.<< Objectives >>The main objective of the project is to enhance transformation and innovation in HE by forging transnational and transdisciplinary spaces of knowledge creation, bringing together different stakeholders and geographical regions. The project advances the creation of transformative learning experiences that highlight cooperation, collaboration and empowerment. By creating a pedagogically sound Framework and Toolkit for blended MLs, and by giving Train-the-Trainer Seminars on their practical implementation, we will be raising educators’ competence to empower learners, particularly in blended settings. The digital dimension of the blended ML will further facilitate educators’ digital readiness in accordance with the European Framework for the Digital Competence of Educators. The project will foster the active engagement of learners, who will have the chance to reflect on, discuss and come up with answers to social questions in an inclusive, interactive, multi-perspective blended environment. Realizing ML formats in a blended setting enables the participation of a higher diversity of stakeholders, lowers the barrier to participate and allows for a combination of local context-specific and more general perspectives. Particularly in a European context, moving MLs in a blended setting creates enormous opportunities such as reaching a broader spectrum of students, enabling transcultural understanding and strengthening shared values while acknowledging diversity.By producing a Toolkit that is flexible, easily accessible and embedded in a Framework conceived to facilitate effective application, it will be useful to a broad range of institutions that seek to improve and modernise their curricula. As an accessible, inclusive online tool for international exchange and learning based on open educational resources, it will add to the creation of a fairer and more sustainable Europe as envisioned in the EU Digital Education Action Plan (2021-2027). The project will strengthen international collaboration and foster a culture of universities collaborating closely with stakeholders from society at large. Combining European educational traditions with the social, technical and glocal needs and opportunities of our time, the project will show the possibilities and values of European cooperation.<< Implementation >>The project encompasses three main sorts of activities: a Hackathon, two Pilot MLs, and a series of four Multiplier Events in the form of Train-the-Trainer Seminars. The Hackathon is crucial in providing input to the Development Team working on the Framework and Toolkit. The Toolkit will be developed, tested, assessed and refined in stages. A first version of the Toolkit will be tested in two Pilot MLs in two different institutional settings and immediately evaluated. The resulting version of the Framework and Toolkit will be presented and taught to educators and other stakeholders at a series of Train-the-Trainer Seminars. Each partner institution (Trnava University, Leuphana University Lüneburg, Munich School of Philosophy and The Newman Institute) will nominate students, teachers and stakeholders from society at large to participate in the Hackathon and the other two LTT events (Pilot MLs). Together with the ME Events (Train-the-Trainer Seminars), there will be a total of over 150 physical participants plus more than 200 online participants.<< Results >>The Project Results include a Framework for implementing blended MLs at HEIs and an accessible open source Toolkit which supports and guides teachers and learners in their creating and sustaining their own blended MLs in HE. As an outcome, the project will raise teachers’ and learners’ readiness to work in digital/blended settings and provide more flexibility in educational tools, which is of particular importance in (post-)pandemic times.The project will foster the active engagement of learners, who will have the chance to reflect on, discuss and come up with answers to social questions in an inclusive, interactive, multi-perspective environment. The best practices identified and disseminated via our project will provide educators with the tools to combine multi-perspective teacher-led and learner-centered processes, and will allow them to act as a mentor and guide for self-regulated and collaborative learning activities. The establishment of MLs in HE will foster a culture of university students and teachers working closer with non-university partners from society at large, providing the basis for jointly addressing major social challenges. The transnational dimension incorporated in our ML format will result in a further pluralisation of perspectives and chances for finding solutions to these challenges. In addition, moving MLs in a blended setting will allow for a broader spectrum of participants, further enabling understanding across borders while acknowledging diversities and at the same time strengthening shared values and allowing to learn within and across specific contexts. In this way, these settings help realizing truly glocal higher education curricula for the 21st century (Caniglia et al, 2017). Our ML Toolkit further has the potential to be utilized in other educational contexts beyond or in collaboration with HEIs (e.g. in collaborations between universities and schools). Furthermore, our concept and our Train-the-Trainer Seminar provides a basis to develop joint courses and curricula. In addition, our output can be used as a basis for future projects, such as a wiki-style platform. Further tangible and intangible results include a designated project website for dissemination of information, the general strengthening of cooperation between the European partners and between partners from our individual networks (with our alliance acting as a nucleus and hub) as well as experiences and capacities gained in European cooperation formats.

Political trust has long been regarded as an important element of regime support and factor of regime stability; it is widely associated with a number of positive outcomes in representative democracies. Political trust drives citizens’ interest and engagement in politics, increases voting turnout and makes law-abiding behavior more common. Political trust is frequently equated to diffuse regime support and thus linked to the effective functioning and stability of the political system. The proposed research effort will monitor the structural (long-term) drivers of political trust but also emphasize the strategies which can be employed by diverse actors and agencies to strengthen accurate and informed judgments of agency trustworthiness. The objective of this ambitious project is twofold. First, we aim to design and implement a complex research effort to collect comprehensive evidence on the judgments of trustworthiness in a range of European states. Second, the project will develop a comprehensive and transparent toolbox of short-term and long-term policy interventions including recommendations, and methodologies for enhancing trust in political institutions, boosting transparency, and inclusiveness of representative systems in Europe. While there is a growing concern about the crisis of democracy and democratic backsliding, this research effort will provide an innovative theoretical perspective on the sources of regime support and strategies for trust building in the public domain. The project looks at the different drivers of 'positive high trust in democracy' and 'negative high trust in autocracy'. The project will facilitate development of a new paradigm of political trust and trust-building and will inspire emergence of new insights on the multi-facet origins of political trust and multi-factor nature of trustworthiness. The project has partners in Austria, Czechia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, and Ukraine.