PRR Project

Summary

The prospective employee is expected to be focused on pursuing high-quality research with scientific autonomy in the area of digital transformation-driven challenges for the education and quality of life (QoL) of individuals and societies, with a special focus on digital literacy and digital engagement as determinants of equity in digital education and QoL. The core research tasks to be assigned to the prospective employee are linked to advanced research into the processes of social, economic, and cultural change that dominate current national and international political debates, requiring evidence-informed solutions that consider the specificity of the populations and contexts to which they are addressed, once the conceptualization and implementation of these solutions must necessarily search for approaches that cut across the boundaries of scientific disciplines and that actively involve citizens in the generation of empirical knowledge and its transfer into practice. It will also inform the construction of appropriate (quantitative and qualitative) data collection measures and the development of innovative interventions to be implemented in education practice.The core tasks to be assigned to the prospective employee are: to apply for competitive research funding at inter/national levels, that will result in the creation of a collaborative network that brings together senior and young researchers from different disciplinary areas; to advance theorical and empirical knowledge and share it through articles targeting the inter/national scientific community and lay public, and through informing actions and knowledge-brokering activities aimed at raising awareness and fostering debate at a society level; to undertake efforts to give greater visibility to the themes of digital transition in education and QoL on the current political agenda, thus contributing to creation of pathways towards more inclusive, reflective and equal societies; to contribute to advanced training of young researchers enrolled in PhD programs, fostering opportunities to create effective synergies that can later turn into long-term interdisciplinary collaborations, with international recognition; to propose a curricular unit in the master’s courses and a cycle of seminars for PhD students on the challenges in question, inviting international experts to give lectures and co-supervise the master´s/doctoral theses supervised; and to encourage visiting researchers to share good practices related to the themes of interest.The prospective employee should have a background in Social Sciences, namely in Psychology and/or Educational Sciences with a clear research emphasis and expertise in digital literacy and digital engagement as determinants of equity in digital education and QoL, prior experience in leading research projects and research teams, the ability to establish strategic international collaborations that can improve the quality of the scientific research performed, and to attract and train young researchers. Knowledge transfer skills will be also highly valued.The research to be developed in the area of digital literacy and digital engagement is strictly aligned with the goals, strategic plan and organizational structure of the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies (CEIS20). CEIS20 is a knowledge-inclusive R&D unit committed to the contemporary production of interdisciplinary knowledge and invested in promoting the interconnection and reconfiguration of disciplines. The current scientific configuration is represented as an interdisciplinary research network, relying on disciplines and specializations as essential to interdisciplinarity. The researchers at the centre have elected five large-scale thematic objectives, or Global Contemporary Challenges (GCCs), which are considered as key interdisciplinary areas of research inscribed in emergent global agendas: 1) interdisciplinary knowledge as a quest to understand complexity; 2) knowledge relations between the arts, sciences, technology, and traditional knowledge; 3) changing environments, sustainability and evolution; 4) democracy crisis, mobilities and inequalities; and 5) uses, representations and paradigms in digital worlds. Educational Sciences are an interdisciplinary area by definition, and both theory and methods in educational sciences can contribute to addressing several of these GCCs. Topics under digital literacy and digital engagement in particular are framed under GCC1 , because the research into pedagogical practices in the post-digital era, digital humanities and education offer opportunities to understand and explain societal complexity. Topics under Digital Literacy are also framed under GCC3 and GCC5 because investigating digital literacy and digital involvement promotes the cutting across the boundaries of scientific disciplines and actively involve citizens in the generation of empirical knowledge and its transfer into practice using the digital world.