Researchers

Rur­al and moun­tain regions, spe­cial­ly cross-bor­der areas, are being deeply affect­ed by core-periph­ery dynam­ics. This fac­tor caus­es a grad­ual iso­la­tion and demo­graph­ic decrease in non-cen­tral areas, which are heav­i­ly suf­fer­ing a depop­u­la­tion process.

But moun­tains are also a won­der­ful lab­o­ra­to­ry for research, exper­i­men­ta­tion and inno­va­tion and for devel­op­ing new uses relat­ed to emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies. They are also ter­ri­to­ries which are liv­ing the envi­ron­men­tal tran­si­tion of our soci­eties and expe­ri­enc­ing their impacts and threats. Apart from con­serv­ing and man­ag­ing a com­mon cul­tur­al (and nat­ur­al) her­itage, rur­al and moun­tain ter­ri­to­ries, through research part­ner­ships, must con­tribute to struc­tur­ing the Euro­pean area.

Giv­en this poten­tial and attrac­tive­ness, the UNITA uni­ver­si­ties, which are solid­ly anchored in their ter­ri­to­ries, pro­pose to set up an exper­i­men­tal mod­el by de-com­part­men­tal­iz­ing approach­es and poli­cies and thus offer­ing a pro­found­ly renewed vision.

The objec­tive is to define a frame­work for action shared by all the pub­lic or pri­vate stake­hold­ers of the ter­ri­to­ries wish­ing to get involved under the UNITA lead­er­ship, con­tribut­ing in this way to rein­force Smart Spe­cial­iza­tion Strate­gies and to build a mod­el of sus­tain­able devel­op­ment for rur­al areas aligned with the Euro­pean Green Deal and the Sus­tain­able Devel­op­ment Goals. The UNITA strat­e­gy is firm­ly com­mit­ted with the three Os pol­i­cy as defined by the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion in 2016: Open Inno­va­tion, Open Sci­ence, Open to the World.

In order to con­tribute to the sus­tain­able devel­op­ment of their ter­ri­to­ries UNITA research and inno­va­tion will focus dur­ing the first phase of the project on three main the­mat­ic areas:

  • Renew­able ener­gy: ener­gy tran­si­tion and resource management.
  • Cir­cu­lar econ­o­my, includind Bio-econ­o­my: net­work­ing and open­ing-up of economies.
  • Cul­tur­al her­itage: enhance­ment of the her­itage and iden­ti­ty of the territories.

Through these three main areas UNITA can con­tribute to the devel­op­ment of rur­al and moun­tain areas through pro­mot­ing the val­ue of the nat­ur­al resources, devel­op­ing net­works of cir­cu­lar econ­o­my (includ­ing bio-econ­o­my), link­ing dif­fer­ent eco­nom­ic activ­i­ties (agri­cul­ture, tourism, indus­try and crafts), pro­mot­ing the rich­ness of the cul­tur­al and lin­guis­tic her­itage, and opti­mis­ing the rela­tion­ship among the dif­fer­ent actors of each ecosystem.

UNITA pro­pos­es an action plan based on the launch­ing of three Research and Inno­va­tion The­mat­ic Hubs as the main tool to reach the fol­low­ing objectives:

  • Focus­ing research on ter­ri­to­ries: For­mal­iz­ing research and inno­va­tion projects around the three the­mat­ic areas in con­nec­tion with the local ecosystem.
  • Iden­ti­fy­ing actors in the three main areas: a car­tog­ra­phy of research
  • Design­ing mod­els for UNITA R&I Hubs
  • Imple­ment­ing UNITA R&I Hubs con­nect­ing all stake­hold­ers: a R&I strate­gic five-years plan
  • Con­nect­ing research and edu­ca­tion:  Embody­ing the research results into the teach­ing at all the learn­ing levels.
  • Intro­duc­ing bach­e­lors’ stu­dents to research through micro-cre­den­tials, when pos­si­ble in the rur­al and moun­tain territories
  • Fos­ter­ing research-based mas­ter edu­ca­tion though sum­mer / win­ter school
  • Enhanc­ing links among the UNITA PhD programs
  • Ener­giz­ing the ter­ri­to­ries: Revi­tal­is­ing the moun­tain and rur­al areas through life-long learn­ing and entrepreneurship.
  • Trans­fer­ring research results for life-long learners
  • Con­nect­ing with stake­hold­ers: a net­work of Liai­son Services
  • Enhanc­ing entre­pre­neur­ship and employ­ment: co-work­ing spaces and busi­ness incubators

This mod­el, which has to be designed and imple­ment­ed dur­ing the peri­od 2020 – 2023, will be then eval­u­at­ed to assess its impact and trans­for­ma­tive capac­i­ty on the ter­ri­to­ry, on research-dri­ven learn­ing, and on life-long learn­ing, employ­ment and entre­pre­neur­ship. If the results are pos­i­tive, it will be expand­ed with the nec­es­sary mod­i­fi­ca­tions in order to extend it pro­gres­sive­ly to oth­er the­mat­ic areas. First of all, those that have a more direct rela­tion­ship with the devel­op­ment of rur­al and moun­tain ter­ri­to­ries and that best fit the Smart Spe­cial­iza­tion Strate­gies of the UNITA regions (for instance, vet­eri­nary, food pro­duc­tion, envi­ron­men­tal sci­ences, cul­tur­al and naturel tourism, among many oth­ers). The objec­tive is to extend in the long-term the cov­er­age to all the the­mat­ic areas that can be addressed through a coor­di­nat­ed col­lab­o­ra­tion of all pub­lic and pri­vate actors in each ecosystem.