PRR Project

Summary

The broad scenario of the 21st-century knowledge society and economy in Western countries is facing unparalleled challenges in several domains that imply a major investment in adult education and lifelong learning research and intervention. On the one hand, one may anticipate that the digital transition and mostly the AI uprising in different sectors of social life, including education and work, calls for privileged attention. This happens not only due to an increasing centrality of processes of upskilling and reskilling of the labour force and organisational change but also to the need to research, experiment and transform training and education models and practices to more efficiently address those issues within a lifelong learning framework, in particular when they target groups in situations of particular social vulnerability or low levels of literacy. On the other hand, the imperative of a green transition affects the labour world and involves wide societal changes. These concern processes of production, consumption and living in a community where the citizens’ political and civic participation - and the understanding of the educational processes that may boost it – are key to promoting more socially equitable citizenship and environmentally sustainable societies – and particularly appeals to a major focus on the professional practices and knowledge of those working within a community education framework to boost those objectives.  Moreover, the “demographic winter” and the anticipated increasingly large group of elderly population in European countries in the next decades defies the education field to understand and intervene in a lifelong learning perspective with this population. This implies, for instance, addressing issues such as the institutionalised practices of education with the elderly,  their social well-being and citizenship,  but also developing a research approach able to induce an effective participatory role of this adult in the production of knowledge on their own lives and as subjects of rights.Finally, the increasingly widening Global North-Global South divide (economic, cultural…). Derived phenomena such as migrations, forced displacement and the increase of the refugee population in Europe pose a new set of intertwined problems concerning community life, social inclusion and citizenship, not only at a national level but also appeals to the consideration of the interdependence relations and inequalities at a global level that are produced in the setting of hegemonic globalisation. In this context, developing research concerning issues such as global citizenship education is essential.CIIE has a long tradition in adult education and lifelong learning research and intervention. Still, this new macro-setting makes a compelling case for the imperative need for a strengthened understanding of i) how the current societal transitions are impacting the adult population, and namely on those that are consequently driven into situations of potential or real social exclusion and social vulnerability and on ii) how and which educational processes and practices (of research and intervention) within a lifelong learning approach may counter the processes of social disaffiliation and impoverished citizenship of adults.This tenure track includes research, teaching and extension to the society activities related to the themes presented. The candidate should have a doctoral degree in the field of Educational Sciences, with experience in researching adult education and lifelong learning in a diversity of educational contexts (formal and non-formal educational contexts); it is expected to demonstrate a high level of academic competence in doing research, but also experience transferring to teaching and extension the research expertise.