This project aims to answer the following question: how and why do different educational systems, and in particular their various modes of educational tracking and sorting, influence the formation and reproduction of social inequalities over the life course? While previous comparative research has identified effects of tracking on educational inequality, this project goes beyond the state of the art by exploring the underlying mechanisms from a dynamic life-course perspective, and by considering long-term consequences of tracking for final educational attainment and labour market outcomes. The project will focus on both inequality formation in general and inequality dynamics with respect to socioeconomic origin, gender and ethnicity in particular. This will be accomplished in a comparative research framework, comprising six European countries, which represent the prototypes of different tracked and comprehensive educational systems: Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, and the UK. Through a unique effort to harmonize high-quality life-course datasets from each of these countries, the project allows for an identification of differences in the dynamics of inequality formation in different institutional settings. The project will be organised as an international research network. It assembles experts in the field from each participating country, who will pursue an integrated research programme based on innovative methodology. By its novel approach of linking institutional characteristics of educational systems to dynamic processes in inequality formation, the project will make a significant contribution to the state of research and provide highly policy-relevant knowledge.

How to promote acceptance, uptake, and adherence to public health measures for COVID-19 prevention and control? What are the most effective ways to address the underlying drivers of fear, anxieties, rumours, stigma regarding, and how to improve public knowledge, awareness, and trust during the response? This project provides an innovative approach to help fill these information gaps and assist both public health measures and refining media and communications efforts. This project will focus on issues of trust and its relationship with political authority. It will use a comprehensive approach drawing insights from anthropology (dynamics of blame and heroization), political sociology (how political authority is built and challenged), science studies (foundations of scientific authority and dynamics of controversies) and digital social science (uses of social media by lay public and activists). ASpecial attention will be devoted to the plurality of voices on both scientific and policy issues and public reactions to contradictory information. Computational social science (network analysis, computational linguistics) will be combined with a qualitative approach grounded in the anthropology of the web. The project will be divided into three modules. The first module will explore accusatory dynamics associated with COVID-19 by analysing the main figures of blame and heroes present in Twitter conversations in French.. The second will examine the links between digital and traditional media both in France and in Francophone sub-Saharan Africa by studying conversations linked to news coverage of the epidemic, including comments posted in response to online articles, conversations posted on online forums, and sites and blogs directly linked from these comments. The third module will focus on two particularly crucial scientific issues for COVID-19: the limits of "open science" in times of epidemics and the link between the use of scientific knowledge by governments and assessment of their “democratic” nature. Its digital-qualitative (mixed method) approach will track circulation of scientific data, publications and visualizations on social media, while undertaking exploratory interviews of scientific actors (virologists and epidemiologists) in the first months of the epidemic regarding data sharing, transparency, and constraints on political actors (health policies and COVID-19 response). Results from this research will lead first and foremost to fundamental research and result in scientific publications in the best international journals. It will also, during the pandemic, directly inform policymaking via two of the core participants of this project. Laetitia Atlani-Duault (PI) and Daniel Benamouzig are members of the Conseil Scientifique COVID19 chaired by Prof. Delfraissy and appointed by the Minister of Health to give scientific opinion on a wide variety of matters pertaining to the coronavirus pandemic.

NEEDS and OBJECTIVES: The strategic objective of CREATES is to enhance practices that create a responsive, engaging and tailored education with students. There is a clear need for modernising higher education by making students more active in their education and encouraging them to take ownership of their studies. This approach fosters the skills graduates will need to be successful in the 21st century: innovation and creativity, participation and responsibility, as well critical thinking and informed judgement. However, this approach is still not widespread in European HE, which sometimes appears stuck in the 19th century. In part this is because there is a great deal of scepticism towards this kind of education. Even in those institutions that are committed to this approach to education – as all partner institutions of CREATES are – difficult questions remain such as: “How to design, implement and assess courses which are co-created by students?” and “How to provide effective advising for sound curricular choices?” The first objective of CREATES is to answer these questions, by producing and disseminating transferable tool-kits for better implementing this approach to education. The second objective is to inform decision-makers at HE institutions and in public policy about the relevance of this kind of education. PROJECT TEAM: All partners in this project are committed to providing responsive, engaging and tailored education and have extensive experience with it. Together, they form a genuine European community of practice, that is at the forefront of educational innovation. The partners involved are: – Leuphana University Lüneburg – The University of Freiburg – King’s College London – Maastricht University – Sciences Po Paris – Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa A key elements of the joint project will be the production of: – 4 versatile tool-kits for learning practices – a academic paper – a position paper – policy recommendations for policy makers ACTIVITIES AND OUTPUTS: The four tool-kits will contribute to the first major objective of CREATES. They will explore two ways of enhancing students’ engagement and responsibility: firstly, effective design, implementation and assessment of responsive and engaged learning on the module-level (design; process; assessment) and, secondly, effective support for students in shaping a personalised curriculum (faculty advising, peer advising, self-advising). These tool-kits will be developed through intensive cooperation, in small teams made up of faculty from the partner institutions, practiced in training events, tested twice, and disseminated through open-access platforms. Throughout this process, students will be actively involved, mirroring the rationale of the project. The second major objective of CREATES will be realised through the production of three outputs: a academic paper for the higher education research community, a report, describing justifications for and ways of implementing the educational strategies developed, targeted at decision-makers within HE institutions, and a policy-paper for HE policy makers on the national and European level. The quality and timely implementation of each step of the project will be monitored by a central steering committee, together with a group of experts from various civil society and a group of exemplary graduates from the partner institutions. IMPACT and SUSTAINABILITY: CREATES is designed to benefit a variety of target groups, including: – Those directly participating in the project, by forming a sound community of practice; – Faculty and staff, both at partner institutions and at third institutions, who will be able to realise better learning practices – Students, who will be directly involved in the development and testing of the tools – The national community of HE innovation; – Higher-Education leaders and managers, who can initiate change within their own institutions in particular on the national level – Policy-makers on a national and European level, who will be able to base their decisions on better information, best practices and sound evidence. The dissemination of the results from CREATES is an integral part of the project. Special importance is given to an open access website on which the toolkit and documents will be available and to the four multiplier events. The dissemination strategy ties into the long-term sustainability of the project in three ways: – The results of CREATES will become part of each partner institution’s educational culture and learning practices – The open access web page will serve as a dynamic platform for a wider European network of institutions committed to this educational approach – All partner institutions are committed to further co-operation beyond the funding period and will be conducting researching, in a next step, how exactly these innovative practices stimulate students to take responsibility for their education and for society.