The democratisation of multimedia content creation has changed the way in which multimedia content is created, shared and (re)used all over the world, yielding significant amounts of user-generated multimedia resources, big part shared under open licenses. At the same time, creative industries need to reduce production costs in order to remain competitive. There is, therefore, an opportunity for creative industries to incorporate such content in their productions, but there is a lack of technologies for easily accessing and incorporating that type content in their creative workflows. In the particular case of sound and music, a huge amount of audio material like sound samples, soundscapes and music pieces, is available and released under Creative Commons licenses, both coming from amateur and professional content creators. We refer to this content as the 'Audio Commons'. However, there exist no practical ways in which Audio Commons can be embedded in the production workflows of the creative industries, and licensing issues are not easily handled across the production chain. As a result, most of this content remains unused in professional environments. The aim of this project is to create an ecosystem of content, technologies and tools to bring the Audio Commons to the creative industries, enabling creation, access, retrieval and reuse of Creative Commons audio content in innovative ways that fit the requirements of the use cases considered (e.g., audiovisual, music and video games production). Furthermore, we tackle rights management challenges derived from the content reuse enabled by the created ecosystem and research about emerging business models that can arise form it. Our project will benefit creative industries by providing new and innovative creativity supporting tools and reducing production costs, and will benefit content creators by offering a channel to expose their works to professional environments and to allow them to (re)licence their content.

GEMINI aims to deliver validated multi-organ and multi-scale computational models for treatment decision support and improved fundamental understanding of acute strokes, both ischaemic and haemorrhagic. We will demonstrate the added benefit of these computational models in personalised disease management. Specifically, GEMINI will deliver validated, integrated multi-scale, multi-organ Digital Twin in Healthcare (DTH) models for cerebral blood and cerebrospinal fluid flow, brain perfusion and metabolism, and blood flow and thrombosis along the heart-brain axis by integrating available and newly developed dynamic, interoperable, and modular computational models. Building on these models, GEMINI will deliver validated population-based DTHs of ischemic and haemorrhagic stroke aetiology and onset, treatment, and disease progression. Utilising these population-based DTHs, GEMINI will validate five personalised subject-specific DTHs, (1) stroke treatment, and (2) disease progression DTHs for acute ischaemic stroke and (3) aneurysm treatment, (4) subarachnoid haemorrhage progression, and (5) unruptured intracranial aneurysm risk assessment DTHs for haemorrhagic stroke to guide patient care and long-term management. We will bring proof of value of digital twins by the evaluation of the ischaemic stroke treatment selection DTH in a multi-centre clinical trial, in which treatment and patient outcomes are compared in situations with and without the availability of a DTH. GEMINI will implement a project-wide structured approach for data harmonisation, curation, model validation, verification, and model certification of the DTHs. Several outcomes of GEMINI have a high value for clinical practice, medical device industry, and in enhancing research in the fields of (bio)medical and computer sciences, warranting an extensive valorisation strategy with adequate IP protection and versatile exploitation actions to enhance a wide adaptation of the results of GEMINI.

This research explores industrial heritage and urban regeneration in European cities and the cultural, social, and economic implication of the regeneration of postindustrial districts. The proposed research action looks at a specific element of the urban built environment that has served as the predominating symbol of industrial—and postindustrial—cities: the industrial chimney. Through a perspective that compares policies, impacts and perceptions of industrial heritage-driven urban regeneration strategies, I aim to explore Barcelona, Manchester, and Łódź. The societal challenges of deindustrialization and questions of how to manage economic and physical transition in formerly industrial cities is one that drives difficult conversations about collective memory, gentrification, and community development. These three cities have become focal points in industrial heritage and postindustrial reinvention, and are thus ideal comparative case studies to explore different approaches to conservation and regeneration strategies through exploring the totemic presence (or conspicuous absence) of smokestacks. How have each of these cities approached, and responded to, these massive spatial, social, and economic shifts spurred on by the restricting of the global economy, how has this manifested in what has been preserved and what has been demolished in the historical built environment, and how have local communities fared in the process? My proposed research contributes to the emerging field of the GeoHumanities, and UPF is one of the leading centers of GeoHumanities scholarship. It will involve comparative case studies of these three cities based on qualitative fieldwork, documentary analysis, and photographic/curatorial methods. In Barcelona, it will also include an innovative new photo-elicitation method involving community response to a visual taxonomy of chimneys throughout the city, as well as a final exhibition at the city’s MACBA museum, where I would have a Secondment.

The general objective of MAGnituDe is to enhance citizen participation through preventing polarisation and the fragmentation of identities related to mass displacement in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine by utilizing affect as a tool, tapping into the sensuous, emotional, and corporeal dimensions of human experience. MAGnituDe explores the consequences of mass migration caused by Russia’s invasion for European democracy and provides evidence-based strategies to reinvigorate democratic governance in response to the negative social consequences of the war for European societies. MAGnituDe utilises the feminist concept of affective geopolitics to analyse how geopolitical narratives and imaginations shape everyday human encounters through which social, political, and cultural identities get constructed and contested. The project explores human encounters on 3 levels: 1) migrant-state (between forcibly displaced people from Ukraine (FDPs) and street-level bureaucrats); 2) migrant-migrant (between FDPs and migrants from Belarus, Russia, and Syria), and 3) migrant-host societies (FDPs encounters with the material culture of host societies). To study the affective dimension of human encounters and identities and to suggest attuned political interventions fostering democratic participation in the sensitive context of the war, MAGnituDe develops and implements an innovative affect-centred methodological framework based on SensArticulate methods, encompassing art-based, experiential, and embodied techniques. MAGnituDe advances an innovative methodology for comprehensive analysis of the interrelations between social, cultural, and political identities, as well as the sense of belonging, and democracies (EO1), which will be used to formulate policy recommendations and pilot strategies preventing discrimination, alienation and marginalisation (EO2) and to diffuse antagonistic identities and social norms (EO3).

“Face Off” is designed as an interdisciplinary project, whose main goal is the first comprehensive investigation and comparison of masking phenomena in the Iron Age Mediterranean (c. 12th-2nd centuries BC), aiming to explain why humans need masks and understand the connection between masks and ancient societies. Apart from focusing on the examination of the Aegean, Cypriot and Phoenician/Punic corpora of masks, this project will use scientific methods (i.e. 3D modelling, pXRF, Face Expression Recognition; Machine Learning) to investigate the transmission of mask models and the impact of ancient masks on the spectators, and to understand the age and gender of the characters represented in these faces, of the persons wearing the masks and of those attending the masked activities. A project on this chronological and geographical coverage and based on such multidisciplinary methodology is unprecedented. Investigating this complexity will provide insights into the role that masks played in some Iron Age communities across the Mediterranean basin. This project is designed to take place at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, which has the expertise, facilities and resources necessary to support such research. By viewing the ancient masks of the Iron Age Mediterranean through the lens of various disciplines and scientific methods, the proposed project entails a significant component of an exchange of knowledge, together with training through research. With its dissemination (seminar, publications) and public engagement activities (articles, lectures, exhibition), this project constitutes an innovative way of doing archaeology and intends to bring together different traditions within the European schools of Mediterranean archaeology.