Ongoing research projects coordinated by CEI researchers are distributed in 3 thematic lines:
Sustainable Societies
Coord: Ana Margarida Esteves
The Sustainable Societies group aims to promote theoretical and methodological innovation in the transdisciplinary understanding of global trends in socio-environmental change, studying their geographically and historically situated manifestations, their transversal interconnections and their implications for development and socio-environmental change. This understanding is pursued by analysing the impact and legacies, over time, of various epistemologies, forms of collective action, development interventions, forms of engagement with public institutions in political and institutional innovation, and strategies for promoting synergies between humans, nature and technologies.
The group adopts methodological approaches that favour a deep and contextualised understanding of long-term multidimensional phenomena, as well as participatory approaches to knowledge production. This includes cosmologies, epistemologies, spiritualities/traditions of wisdom, non-conventional pedagogies, action-research methodologies and other participatory and engaged approaches to knowledge production and dissemination, as well as cultural positions that provide post-human, post-patriarchal and decolonial counterpoints to modernity by re-signifying relations with the non-rational dimensions of human existence, as well as with the non-human dimensions of nature.
This group presents innovative strategies for the formation of new groups of academics and professionals, with the aim of influencing the dynamism of civil society, environmental sustainability, entrepreneurship and political innovation at an international level. In addition to fundamental and applied research and dissemination, this happens through contributions to policy briefs, working papers, databases and other research tools, among other forms of engagement with civil society, political actors and business players.
Global Politics and Security
Coord.: Ana Mónica Fonseca
The Global Politics and Security research group has two main lines of research:
The first concerns global governance, in which researchers study the intersection of the main components and the main consequences of the current international order. The aim is to unravel the relationships between domestic and foreign policy, decision-making processes and public policies in world affairs that promote different regional, formal and informal global solutions. Interest is focused on relations between countries, but also between transnational non-governmental organisations, as well as their influence in global, national or local political arenas. Special attention is paid to the dynamics emanating from the European, Atlantic and Asian contexts.
The second line of research centres on global security challenges. It includes traditional threats to peace, such as interstate and regional armed conflicts, but also cross-border and transnational challenges, such as the prevention of terrorism, the interaction between critical and disruptive technologies and security, the relationship between climate change and security, the dangers of global pandemics or the coastal links of maritime security. Significant attention is paid to expanding networks of junior and senior researchers through additional applications for national and international funding.
This research group aims to consolidate and strengthen CEI’s capacity to host and support new research teams that can successfully apply and compete in international funding calls, focusing on three self-reinforcing tasks: ensuring active knowledge transfer, increasing new partnerships with other relevant national and international institutions, and leveraging this knowledge and partnerships in the design of public policies and the overall transformation of society.
Democracy, Activism and Citizenship
Coord.: Giulia Daniele
The Democracy, Activism and Citizenship group aims to strengthen its multidisciplinary and multidimensional approaches to the interaction between current forms of democracy, grassroots activism and citizenship in different geographical contexts, with special attention to the Middle East, Latin America and Africa. One of the main objectives is to promote comparative studies that can overcome regional divisions and reflect on global issues, especially from the regions of the Global South. In particular, the group’s researchers deepen their projects by investigating socio-political issues from their different contexts and fieldwork, including institutional and non-institutional politics, while considering politics from the margins and decolonial perspectives. This will translate into greater engagement with contemporary debates on the relevance of social justice and good practice in global politics and, at the same time, with current processes of public policy production and the implementation of the 2030 agenda.
Consequently, the main aim of the group’s researchers is to apply for competitive international funding as lead coordinators. In terms of activities, the researchers continue their participation in international research networks, along with organising different forms of knowledge transfer events, both in academia and in partnership with civil society organisations. This strategy is especially reinforced with partners based in the aforementioned regional contexts, which have become the core of most of the group’s research projects and teaching disciplines.