Incities
InCities is a project under the Horizon Europe program: Widening Participation and Spreading Excellence of the European Commission.
Launched for a period of three years (October 2022-September 2025), its goal is to initiate transformations focused on the needs of inclusion, sustainability, and resilience of cities in the higher education institutions that are members of the project and their partner territories.
The objectives of the InCities project
By focusing on two countries like Portugal and Slovakia, identified by the European Commission as having the potential to contribute more to the European research space, InCities addresses the European and global challenges of cities in all their dimensions (sociocultural, economic, political, and institutional), and the means to address them.
The InCITIES project is developed by a consortium of 5 partner universities:
| France | Gustave Eiffel Univeristy |
|---|---|
| Germany | Technology Arts Sciences TH Köln |
| Finland | LAUREA University of Applied Sciences |
| Portugal | ISICTE University Institute of Lisbon |
| Slovakia | University of Zilina |
Its objectives are:
- Research-Based Strategy: Map out European institutional transformation strategies towards sustainable research-based universities within the InCITIES consortium.
- Network of Higher Education Institutions: Build and strengthen a long-term network of participating higher education institutions and actors in the surrounding ecosystem, based on the formation of integrated knowledge centers to mobilize local, regional, and national investments in synergy with European Union funding opportunities.
- InCITIES Processes: Enhance scientific and technological capabilities by sharing best pedagogical, research, management, and administrative practices within the consortium, connecting staff and disciplines to drive knowledge transfers to expanded higher education institutions and improve their profile of excellence and impact.
- InCITIES Contribution to Knowledge: Create an open and innovative education and training platform in synergy with the project's R&I program focused on inclusive, sustainable, and resilient cities.
The project is structured around work packages, coordinated by one of the partner universities:
- The first one focuses on issues of equality, diversity, and inclusion within universities.
- The second one addresses the management of staff careers.
- The third one deals with student and staff mobility.
- The fourth one concentrates on capacity building (work on pedagogical content and competency-based approaches).
- The fifth one focuses on networking researchers from partner universities to develop a common research agenda and subsequently research projects and publications.
To achieve the expected results, InCITIES is based on the mobilization of highly collaborative, iterative, and progressive approaches, methods, and tools. In other words, the implementation of work programs is designed with the effective participation and engagement of students and staff in this process. The project relies notably on two innovative approaches: a co-creation method for the research agenda and an active pedagogy method (learning by doing). These two methods complement each other and support the objectives of the InCITIES model.