PROJECTS

BASICC: Building Alternative Skills for Creativities and Commons

The Aim and description: BASICC develops skills for the organization of vacant spaces in Europe, in connection with the European ecosystem of "social and proximity economy".Project will develop pedagogical innovations: university degree sessions on vacant places and their reuse in shared spaces, a work-based learning for access to a professional title of digital mediation space managers, a university course on acquired reflexive skills and a digital narrative platform. Dissemination strategy is addressed through a protocol for designing national training courses on the management of common spaces. Communication with the general public will happen through the production of a documentary on the skills developed by the learners. Evaluation is oriented towards policy makers, to whom project members will provide comprehensive analyses of the learning associated with occupying vacant spaces and the economic impact of the ecosystem created.

Project period: 01.08.2023.-31.07.2025.

Project number: 101111802

Project partners: 15 project partners from Italy, France, Latvia, Turkey, Belgium and Germany. Lead partner: Coop Eskemm

Project total budget: 1 250 000.00 EUR

ViA project budget: 28 783.00 EUR

Programme: Erasmus+

Involved staff: Marija Katrīna Dambe, Linda Murāne, Liene Golča

Optimising the Governance and Management of the Natura 2000 Protected Areas Network in Latvia (LatViaNature)

The overall objective of the LIFE-IP LatViaNature is to ensure implementation of the PAF specifically addressing gaps and shortcomings and ensuring favorable conservation status of the natural and semi-natural habitats and species of Community interest by developing best practices, and creating and adopting innovative solutions.

The proposed IP will include the following specific objectives:

To improve the conservation status of habitats and species through wise planning and effective management;
To improve the efficiency of Natura 2000 network;
To improve the nature planning system at site level by making it more flexible and user-friendly;
To develop motivating mechanisms to support effective nature conservation on private lands;
To develop an effective system for control and management of invasive alien species;
To create a modern, centralized data portal for nature conservation sector;
To strengthen the capacity of administration and to enhance collaboration among governmental, non-governmental sectors and scientific institutions;
To increase the stakeholder involvement and to raise awareness of specific target groups, especially private landowners, regarding nature conservation in general and specific areas of the IP;
To raise awareness of the general public on nature conservation issues and to increase their knowledge and voluntary involvement in biodiversity conservation.

Implementation period: 01.11.2020. - 31.12.2028.

Funding/ programme: EU Life Environment Programme

HESPI role: Project partner

Cooperation partners: Nature Conservation Agency (lead partner), Ministry of Environmental Protection and Regional Development of the Republic of Latvia, University of Latvia, Daugavpils University, Latvia University of Life Sciences and Technologies, JSC “Latvia’s state forests”, Latvian Rural Advisory and Training Centre, Latvian Fund for Nature, Pasaules dabas fonds

Project funding: 19484173.00 EUR

Project scientific manager (e-mail): Agita Līviņa (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Involved staff: HESPI research staff Andris Klepers, Anda Arkliņa

More information: https://www.daba.gov.lv/public/lat/projekti/aktualie_projekti/latvianature/

Acceleration Services in support of the institutional transformation of Higher Education Institutions - Accelerate Future HEI

Accelerate future hei

Higher education institution (HEIs) are crucial drivers of knowledge ecosystems, and increasingly also of innovation ecosystems possessing the potential to impact through education, research and regional development. Through Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe funding, the European Commission has been active in supporting HEIs to increase the engagement and impact in the context of their region, by fostering innovation and entrepreneurship activities. The new European Research Area is expected to strengthen the Research and Innovation dimension of HEIs through a comprehensive institutional Higher Education Transformation Agenda in synergy with the European Education Area, reinforcing their role as drivers of change, fostering their recovery, enabling shared objectives between the EU and Member States’ initiatives to support higher education institutions in their efforts to transform on their education, research, innovation and service to society missions. Given that that impact is achieved through active engagement of the knowledge and digitally-driven HEI with its environment, understanding the context in which the HEI exists and aims to impact is vitally important. Initiatives such as the EC’s Smart Specialisation recognise the symbiosis between the HEI and its region, whilst the existence of ecosystems in both university-business cooperation and entrepreneurship are recognised. To engender transformation within HEIs to create better impact pathways, is an exercise in change management and processes. To drive change then, a comprehensive series of sequential and parallel activities need to occur that raise Awareness, Desire, Knowledge that lead to Action, which then needs to be measured to enable the new behaviour to be Reinforced. This can be achieved through a focussed support system that builds on the status quo, develops a vision and activities described in a roadmap and then executed in application projects supported with coaching, training and international exchange.

Objectives:

1. To identify the status quo of the HEI and their ecosystem with regards to entrepreneurial and innovative activities through a comprehensive Scanning and Scoping phase

2. To develop an acceleration development roadmap that incorporates a vision, realistic activities to be executed through a transformation acceleration project within the Developing phase

3. To test and implement acceleration services that help institutions implement a transformation strategy and roadmap, by creating a shared knowledge base, coaching service and virtual meeting place for HEIs to connect with peers and external stakeholders such as other ecosystem actors, investors and public funders. The acceleration services will provide: access to coaches, mentors, expertise and facilitated discussion from academia or outside academia, with different profiles that match with the areas from the transformation agenda. These individuals should provide support for

i. strategy development,

ii. roadmap development, and

iii. implementation of the above roadmap (through institutional transformation acceleration projects and mapping the required support resources), as well as provide

iv. detailed advice on access to funding from EU, national, and regional sources to allow the HEIs to deliver on the transformations. This advice should enable HEIs to formulate standard methodologies to develop specific investment agendas that consist of different funding and financial instrument branches, aligned with the priorities and areas of the common transformation agenda.

4. To include an evaluation mechanism that enables partners to assess the strategies from HEIs

supervised by an ‘acceleration board’ of independent experts. The evaluation mechanism will monitor

progress of the HEIs in the implementation of the chosen areas from the transformation agenda.

5. To generate policy feedback to the European Commission and Member States, as well as to provide

widespread dissemination of the pilot results to other target groups

Implementation period: 01.01.2023. – 31.12.2026.

Funding/ programme: Horizon Europe programme, the EU’s key funding programme for research and innovation. /European Research Executive Agency

Aim: Together, we aim to develop and pilot test a methodology for acceleration services to support HEI institutional transformation

Leading partner: Coordinator: UNIVERSITY INDUSTRY INNOVATION NETWORK BV (UIIN

Cooperation partners:

TUM International (TUMint)

Momentum Consulting (MMS)

Instituto Superior Técnico (IST)

Université de La Reunion (UR)

Universidad Europea de Canarias (UEC)

Universidade da Madeira (UMa)

St. Pölten University of Applied Science (STPUAS)

UC Leuven-Limburg University of Applied Sciences (UCLL)

Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences (MATE)

Politehnica University Timișoara (UPT)

Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences (ViA)

Project funding: 3 197 063.75 (for ViA 208 750.00) Project manager (e-mail): Iveta Putniņa (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Involved staff: Agita Šmitiņa, Vera Grāvīte-Lapere

More information: Home - Accelerate Future HEI

News

1. Vidzeme University of Applied Sciences launches new project to accelerate the future potential of Higher Education institutions in Europe. Read here

2. Testing partner ViA explores best practices in university transformation during its international week. Read here

E3UDRES2 Ent-r-e-novators. Cooperating for Excellence and Impact in Research & Innovation

Ent-r-e-novators

Ent-r-e-novators: entrepreneurs-researchers-educators-innovators - an ambition where we drop the either-or-thinking pattern and advocate a strong interconnection between education, research, innovation and entrepreneurship. E3UDRES2 Ent-r-e-novators address the region’s needs in a variety of approaches: futuring workshops, hackathons, I living labs or citizen science research projects. Ent-r-e-novators bridge the know-do gap and move from a me to a we-culture.

E³UDRES² Ent-r-e-novators enhances the research capacity of the European University alliance E³UDRES², the Engaged and Entrepreneurial European University as Driver for European Smart and Sustainable Regions and aims to co-create a specific joint research strategy for the alliance.

E3UDRES2 aims to nurture the potential in every researcher, educator and learner to become a “Ent-r-e-novator”. According to E3UDRES2 own lexical framework, we define Learners, Educators, Researchers and Innovators/Entrepreneurs (the “LERIE” community) as problem-solving, entrepreneurial and inquisitive-minded individuals who have a deep sense of social and societal responsibility and put their energy and efforts into serving the best interests of the wider community. Among these actors, Ent-r-e-novators have a leading role in the renovation and transformation of our education and research institutions into open and inclusive ecosystems – the I-living labs. In the spirit of inclusiveness and interdisciplinarity demanded by the holistic nature of the challenges we face nowadays, any student or worker, inside or outside our institutions, and regardless of age, career level and background, can be a LERIE or an Ent-r-e-novator making use of the tools and resources at their disposal (which depend on how they are positioned inside the knowledge triangle: education, research and innovation) to strive for excellence and impact in advancing E3UDRES2 mission and vision for building smart and sustainable regions.

We expect to jointly achieve the following objectives:

Co-create a common strategy and agenda that unlocks our potential for excellence in Research and Innovation, to accelerate the transformation into a multi-institutional European Research and Innovation Centre for Smart and Sustainable Regions;
Develop best practices and a strategy for pooling research infrastructures, expertise, data and resources and for collaborating with/getting access to other strategic research infrastructures;
Develop structured support programmes aimed at empowering our scientific communities to fully embrace Open Science, Open Innovation, Open Education, Engaged Science and Engaged Education;
Work to achieve a level playing field in terms of institutional strategies and policies for Human Resources for Research, from which we will be able to address bigger challenges, such as brain mobility, new career assessments and joint recruitment strategies;
Develop a structured and integrated framework to seamlessly link all our R&I ecosystems and the E3UDRES2 knowledge triangle of education, research and innovation;
Along our pathway to build a common R&I agenda, be connected and dialogue with peer Alliances and HEIs, HEI associations and advocacy groups, and policy-makers with a view to contribute with evidence based results to the co-creation of future EEA/ERA work programmes and to inform better policies.

Partnership:

St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences (Austrija)
Polytecnic Institute of Setubal (Portugāle)
Polytechnical University Timisoara (Rumānija)
Szent Istvan University (Ungārija)
UC Leuven-Limburg (Beļģija)
Vidzemes Augstskola (Latvija)

Project coordinator: St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences (Austrija)

Project coordinator at ViA: Oskars Java

Project team at ViA: Oskars Java, Gatis Krūmiņš, Iveta Putniņa, Agnese Dāvidsone, Linda Veliverronena, Vineta Silkāne, Kapsars Osis, Katrīne Kūkoja

Project duration: 01.10.2022 - 30.09.2025

Total funding: 1 905 934.34 EUR

Project funding: European Union

PROJECT NEWS

1. Report E³UDRES² Ent-r-e-novadores project meets in Austria to work on joint research strategies (14.03.2023.)

Scientific school culture for sustainable society (ZIKS)

LZP FLPP

The Aim of this interdisciplinary research project is to study scientific culture at secondary schools in Latvia as one of the most crucial driving forces for science literate society, generate knowledge basis for scholarly discourse and policy recommendations, and to develop and test a model of theoretically and empirically grounded criteria for evaluating scientific school culture in the post pandemic future.

Implementation period: 03.01.2022. - 30.12.2024.

Project Nr.: lzp-2021/1-0135

Funding/ programme: Fundamentālo un lietišķo pētījumu programma

HESPI role: Project implementer

Cooperation partners: University of Latvia

Project funding: 299 996.40 EUR

Project scientific manager (e-mail): Agnese Dāvidsone (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.)

Involved staff: HESPI research staff Agnese Dāvidsone, Vineta Silkāne, Gatis Krūmiņš. Master's students - guest research assistants Gita Dukure, Lelde Āre. Guest researcher Anželika Krastiņa. LU research staff Zanda Rubene, Linda Daniela.