India

The proposed multi-disciplinary project aims to making South Indian artisanal fishers' livelihoods more secure and sustainable by improving safety at sea. Bringing together these small-scale fishers with weather forecasters and government agencies, it will devise, test and promote effective means for the co-production and communication of accurate weather forecasts, thus increasing resilience of the fishers amidst a trend of extreme and hazardous weather conditions in a changing climate. Moreover, the project will devise an "action template" of practical methods and a road-map for co-producing and communicating accessible and effective weather forecasts to artisanal fishers elsewhere in India and beyond. It will also contribute to academic debates concerning: the understanding and response to environmental risks; the role of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) in disseminating information and warnings to diverse and vulnerable populations; and the knowledge, practices and livelihoods of fishing communities in Asia. The main objective of the proposed project is to close the gap between what marine weather forecasters produce and disseminate, and what artisanal fishers recognize as relevant and actionable inputs for decision-making. Access to trusted and actionable forecasts helps fishers make informed decisions to go to sea or not under hazardous weather conditions, thus reducing risk of potentially life-threatening accidents at sea, diminishing the loss of gear and boats, and, more generally, building resilience against hazardous weather conditions. Such weather-resilient pathways will contribute to promoting more secure and sustainable livelihoods for artisanal fishers in India and elsewhere in the Global South. This project will be part of a larger effort called the Sussex Sustainability Research Programme (SSRP) to provide science relevant for implementing the SDGs in seventeen low and medium income countries. Drawing on the expertise of a multi-disciplinary research team--comprising anthropologists, geographers, atmospheric and marine scientists, and ICT and media experts - the proposed project combines complementary methodological approaches. It utilizes ethnographic methods to study the wider social, economic and cultural practices underpinning artisanal fishing, as well as to gauge fishers' forecast usage and uptake. It uses satellite and in-situ weather observations to gain insights into changing hazard patterns and forecast challenges, as well as to acquire the necessary data to co-produce area-specific weather forecasts with fishers, forecasters and other stakeholders. It will employ participatory approaches and technologies developed in the fields of human-computer interaction and ICT4D to co-produce and test effective, culturally appropriate communication platforms to disseminate weather forecast and provide feedback on the same. To account for variations in fishing techniques and technologies, and in the socio-economic organization of fishing, as well as different forms of social organization and cultural orientations the field-research will take place in three different fishing communities. These will be located, respectively, in Kanyakumari, Thiruvananthapuram and Kollam districts in South India, a stretch of coast with one of the densest concentrations of artisanal fishers in Asia, using diverse craft, gear and fishing methods in a geographically diverse setting.

The Project addresses the process of internationalisation of higher Education (IoHE) (focus on Internationalisation at Home - IaH) in Asian countries as the one that requires immediate institutional response and actions. Enabling Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to strategically manage internationalisation in the provision of education, research, mobility and services are regarded to be the project’s overall objective and the main underpinning of Partner countries’ accountable and complementary role in EU-Asia cooperation development.The project's key target groups are academics, researchers, students and administrators who are participating or wish to participate in international collaboration. The qualitative leap in the process of internationalisation they will benefit from stems from the project's main outcomes.Overall Objective:To strengthen PC HEIs' internationalisation capabilities and to develop students' global competence through the integration of intercultural dimensions into PC HEIs' formal and informal curriculum.Results:1) Country profile on IoHE, including research and services issues 2) University Strategy on Internationalisation 3) University Action Plan on IaH4) Storytelling How-to Manual5) Guide for International Students6) Established/ consolidated International Relations Office and Projects Office7) FRIENDs Teahouse (intercultural hub)

The area of cognitive sciences is a unique cross-disciplinary field of social and behavioural sciences (SBS), which brings psychology and neuroscience. However, cognitive sciences in Russian Federation (RF) are largely framed as a psychology-only discipline, while in India they are sparse with only a few premier institutions. This limitation may stem from (1) a highly conservative educational tradition that has resisted incorporating modern approaches into curricula, (2) the lack of interdisciplinary approaches in teaching cognitive sciences and neurobiology, and (3) the lack of international perspective in education. Altogether, this makes the education in cognitive fields less competitive on the international market and less attractive to students, even though the need in experts is very high. We believe that the essential priorities are to promote interdisciplinary fields of cognitive sciences and to include more neuroscience-related disciplines into curriculum of psychology in RF. This, however, poses a serious challenge, as training in neuroscience is more time-consuming. To address these challenges, the project will implement neuroscience curriculum in psychology in a unified Master-PhD track, aimed at streamlining multidisciplinary education in RF. The curriculum of advanced courses will be developed based on expertise of leading higher education institutions (HEIs) in psychology and neuroscience. The project particularly focuses at introducing innovative knowledge on neuronal basis of cognitive functions to core education in SBS. We aim at coordinating curricula at Master and PhD levels to raise the quality of cross-disciplinary PhD projects. The new Master-PhD direct track will provide both a more competitive environment and a better-defined career perspective, which will help to attract higher-quality students to RF and India HEIs. The project will foster internationalization of RF HEIs and the capacity of our network in education in cognitive sciences.