In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the “Summer With Science” contest was created through the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) and the General Directorate of Higher Education (DGES) for oriented support to Summer Schools in Polytechnics and Universities. The activities are within the scope of the development of innovative solutions associated with the Economic and Social Stabilization Program (PEES). Two projects sent by researchers from the Cultures Past & Present project were contemplated: Africas: mobility, violence, memory, and creativity, coordinated by professor João Sarmento, and Communication and Culture for Development, coordinated by researcher Lurdes Macedo, both from the Center for Studies in Communication and Society (CECS / UMinho).
This support, financed by FCT and DGES, offers scholarships and integrated R&D training plans to encourage classroom activities by students, teachers and researchers. In total there are 25 students selected for a research scholarship with activities until October.
Africas summer school: mobility, violence, memory and creativity
Africas intends to stimulate a multidisciplinary look from the social sciences, humanities, and arts too, on and from the African continent, and to provide specific training on this territory. The objectives are the training of students for critical thinking, and strategies, methods, objects, and research topics. Knowledge and skills are developed to enable the design and continuation of an autonomous research project, allowing candidates to acquire skills in research, analysis, interpretation, and criticism of sources, mainly from digital archives and resources. present at the university and at the research center. The training course has three blocks held in the months of July, August, and September. More information here.
Summer School in Communication and Culture for Development
The problematization of the social functions of communication and culture in a post-industrial world will provide fertile ground for further reflection on the practices undertaken in strategic planning projects for development. Communication and culture can be used at various levels in these contexts, most of the time, more for their instrumental nature than for their transformative nature in the face of intervention processes and change objectives. The same is to say that the effects of persuasion are far more explored than the virtues of training when planning the social functions of communication and culture in development projects. In fact, both in the North and in the South, great communication and cultural programming campaigns are privileged with persuasive objectives with traditional communities or excluded from the communication and power circuits, with a view to their behavioral change, to the detriment of the use of techniques capable of involving and committing these communities to build their future. Experiences and critical reflections on this type of intervention will be shared by several of the trainers of the seminars of this Summer School.
