Participation of the
Institute for the Study of Societies and
Knowledge,BAS
in Horizon2020 Projects as well as in Research
Infrastructures
Prof. Rumiana Stoilova
Round Table Discussion with the participation of Robert-Jan Smits,
General Director of the Directorate “Scientific Research and
Innovations "at the European Commission
26 June 2017
Sofia Tech Park
TOP 10 BULGARIAN BENEFICIARIES – HORIZON 2020
for 2015
NAME OF THE INSTITUTION
EU FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTION
€ million
SOFIA UNIVERSITY
1,1
ONTOTEXT AD
0,75
INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION 0,68
TECHNOLOGIES
TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF SOFIA
0,59
APPLIED RESEARCH AND COMMUNICATIONS FUND
0,56
PENSOFT PUBLISHER Ltd
0,55
ETEM BULGARIA AD
0,54
BLACK SEA ENERGY RESEARCH CENTER
0,52
TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF VARNA
0,51
INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF SOCIETIES AND
KNOWLEDGE
0,47
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ISSK is among the TOP 10 BULGARIAN
BENEFICIARIES in HORIZON 2020
ISSK is placed among the top 10 universities and
think tank groups in Bulgaria , which received
grants in Horizon 2020.
Having in mind the relative small amount of the
budgets in social sciences, and that the
ranking accounts for the budgets, taking place
among top 10 is a very satisfactory fact.
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Horizon 2020 Projects
for 2017
• NEGOTIATE , Horizon 2020: Grant agreement No
649395, team leader Prof. Rumiana Stoilova
• EXCEPT, Horizon 2020 , Grant agreement No 649496,
team leader Assoc. Prof. Maria Jeliazkova
• ENLIVEN , Horizon 2020, team leader Prof.Pepka
Bojadjieva
• SHARE European Research Infrastructure Consortium
(SHARE-ERIC) – team leader Dr. Ekaterina Markova
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www.negotiate-research.eu
Project title: NEGOTIATE – Negotiating early job insecurity
and labour market exclusion in Europe.
Duration: 36 months from March 2015 – March 2018
Participants: academic organizations from Norway
(coordinator), Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Spain, Poland,
Czech Republic, UK ,Switzerland.
Scientific coordinator: NOVA Norwegian Social Research,
Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences
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PROJECT OVERVIEW
NEGOTIATE (Negotiating early job-insecurity and labour market exclusion in
Europe) is a research project centered on young people in Europe. The
project’s overarching objective - to provide new, gender-sensitive,
comparative knowledge about the short- and long-term consequences of
early job insecurity, taking into account how the active agency of young
people mediates such consequences.
General labour market processes and a severe employment crisis currently define
the macro level.
The organisation of meso level structures creates differential access to public and
private support within and across countries.
The micro level is characterised by young people with unequal opportunities to
influence individual job prospects.
The project examines the long- and short-term consequences of experiencing job
insecurity or labour market exclusion in the transition to adulthood.
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WORK PACKAGES
1
Project Management
2
Early job insecurity and
youth unemployment as
a theoretical and societal
challenge
3
Early job insecurity in
Europe: Mapping
diversity and the impact
of the economic crisis
4
Negotiating subjective
and objective well-being
as consequences of early
job insecurity and labour
market marginalisation
7
Understanding
employers’ assessments
of young job applicants:
A comparative vignette
experiment- Swiss,
Bulgaria, Norway, Greece
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8
Negotiating transitions
to adulthood in the
context of economic
crisis - Lead beneficiary
ISSK-BAS
Policy coordination in a
system of multi-level
governance
6
9
Causes and long term
consequences of early
job insecurity: Exploring
the dynamics of scarring
Dissemination and
impact
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BULGARIAN NEGOTIATE
TEAM
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EXCEPT: Social Exclusion of Youth in Europe:
Cumulative Disadvantage, Coping Strategies,
Effective Policies and Transfer
 Research project under Horizon 2020 Research and
Innovation Action (call H2020-YOUNG-SOCIETY-2014),
receiving funding under grant agreement No 649496.
 Participants: academic organizations from Estonia
(coordinator), Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland,
Sweden, UK & Ukraine.
 ISSK role: leader of Work Package 2: “Assessment of the
diffusion and effects of youth inclusion policies” &
implementing the different types of research in Bulgaria
EXCEPT: derived
research challenges
• To increase the value added of social research by:
 Enhancing transition from ‘policy-based’ to ‘evidence-based’ research;
 Stimulating independent participatory social impact assessments;
 Addressing wellbeing of all by focusing on income policies and growing
inequalities;
 Providing better links between social research results and decisions
taken
• To improve social research quality by:
 Addressing the problems faced by citizens and reducing the power
distances in deciding what is important and what is not, incl. by
reviewing the financial flows;
 Reviewing research quality indicators instead the over-emphasis on
quantitative indicators;
• To reconsider the balance between natural and social
sciences in a way that is more fruitful for the societies.
EXCEPT AND NEGOTIATE:
DIFFERENT STRATEGIES TOWARDS A COMMON AIM
• “The central aim of the EXCEPT project is to develop effective and
innovative policy initiatives to help young people in
Europe overcome labour market insecurities and related risks.”
• “The overall strategy in NEGOTIATE is to observe the present,
learn from the past and to project the future in order to inform
policies to prevent labour market exclusion and secure the social
inclusion of young people in the short and long term, thereby
contributing to reaching the objectives defined in Europe 2020 –
the EU’s growth strategy.”
• TOWARDS BUILDING AN INCLUSIVE AND FAIR SOCIETY
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ENLIVEN
Project website
https://h2020enliven.org
Twitter
@H2020enliven
Facebook page
http://bit.ly/h2020enlivenfacebook
Coordinator: University of Nottingham
10 partners
Project duration:
1st October 2016 – 30th September
2019
WHAT IS ENLIVEN ABOUT?
The ENLIVEN project’s overarching objective is to provide an innovative model
and mechanism to support policy debate, policy formation and policy evaluation
in lifelong learning. Integrating theoretical and empirical perspectives from social
and computer sciences, it focuses on the needs of young adults.
Innovativeness
 The ENLIVEN research combines bounded agency theory from the social
sciences with case-based reasoning from computer science (in particular,
artificial intelligence).
 The ENLIVEN enriches theoretical reasoning by further developing concepts,
such as bounded agency, multi-level governance, educational/learning
generations, multi-level context.
 The ENLIVEN research models how policy interventions in adult education can
become more effective and implements an innovative Intelligent Decision
Support System to provide a new and more scientific underpinning for policy
debate and decision-making on adult learning, especially for young adults.
MAIN ACTIVITIES
• Study of adult learning programmes, policies and governance in Europe,
looking at the multi-dimensional nature of social exclusion.
• Analysis of the effects of system characteristics on participation in learning
activities at country/region/sector levels, with particular concern for
disadvantaged groups and youth at risk of exclusion.
• Investigation of young adults’ learning at work, undertaking organisational
case studies and cross-country comparative institutional analysis.
• Development and trial of an Intelligent Decision-making Support System (IDSS)
to support evidence-based policy-making and debate.
• Project’s relevance for Bulgaria and ISSK – capacity building (knowledge and
networking) in the area of lifelong learning; policy relevance – Bulgaria is
among the countries with the lowest participation rate in lifelong learning in
the EU: 2.2% for 2016; EU average – 10.8%; EU 2020 target - 15%.
SHARE – Survey of Health,
Ageing and Retirement in Europe
• SHARE is centrally coordinated by the Munich Center for the
Economics of Aging (MEA), Max Planck Institute for Social Law
and Social Policy.
• SHARE-Bulgaria is coordinated by the Institute for the Study
of the Societies and Knowledge at the Bulgarian Academy of
Sciences. SHARE-panel is conducted in Bulgaria for the first
time in 2017 with 2000 interviews.
• SHARE now covers 26 countries of the European Union as well
as Switzerland and Israel.
• Thanks to the efforts of the European Commission, SHARE
covers all the member states, and it is able to implement a
sample size which allows country comparisons for researchers
and policy analysts.
• SHARE has become a major pillar of the
European Research Area, selected as one of
the projects to be implemented in the
European Strategy Forum on Research
Infrastructures (ESFRI) in 2006 and given a
new legal status as the first ever European
Research Infrastructure Consortium (SHAREERIC) in March 2011.
• SHARE responds to a Communication by the European
Commission calling to "examine the possibility of
establishing, in co-operation with Member States, a
European Longitudinal Ageing Survey".
• SHARE has become a major pillar of the European
Research Area, selected as one of the projects to be
implemented in the European Strategy Forum on
Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) in 2006 and given a
new legal status as the first ever European Research
Infrastructure Consortium (SHARE-ERIC) in March
2011.
Conclusions: Global and societal challenges (1)
• Negotiate and Except focus on youth insecurity in the
transitions to stable jobs and to adulthood.
• Enliven – points to the needs and shortcomings in EU
countries in LLL
• Next aim is to become a coordinator in a European
consortium
• SHARE investigates health and active aging.
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Conclusions: Global and societal challenges (2)
• The topics of the three Horizon 2020 Projects
and SHARE as an ERIC Research Infrastructure
in social sciences should be prolonged in the
next research phases in Europe, within the
9FP, as they refer to two important challenges
facing contemporary societies: social
inequalities and knowledge
acquisition/transfer.
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Bulgarian Research as Part of the
European and Global knowledge
Benefits from participation in EU projects:
– Two-way knowledge and experience transfer
– Networking
– Better opportunities for publications in journals
with impact factor for social scientists
– Inclusion of PhD students provides them with
opportunity to develop their dissertations in an
international academic environment and to be
better paid.
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Open Science, Big Data,
Digital challenges
• There is still no Social Data Archive existing in
Bulgaria.
• Hence, the inclusion in CESSDA network is the next
project, which should be included in the National
map of research infrastructures, together with ESS
and SHARE
• Open access to publications – a necessity for us, but
paying fees for it is a real problem. There is a need
for support for national journals in social sciences,
receiving impact factor.
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THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!
Prof. Rumiana Stoilova
Director of the
Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge, BAS, Bulgaria
[email protected]
[email protected]
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