The R&I PEERS project will be based on the concept of gender equality, that can be expressed as “women and men enjoy the same status and have equal opportunity to realize their full human rights and potential to contribute to national, political, economic, social and cultural development, and to benefit from the results”. The R&I PEERS project aims at creating and validating pilot experiences aiming at disrupting the gender-biased approach and those unconscious rules that limit the participation and the career of women in research and innovation in the Mediterranean Area. To do so, we will leverage on the synergies of structured dialogues and women’ empowerment through skills and entrepreneurial perspective of research and innovation. The project objectives are: 1. Implementation and improvement of 7 GEPs in R&I related organisations 2. Smooth the gap of gender representation in decision-making and research-performing processes 3. Maximise the impact and the efficacy of gender content into the research programmes The proposal aims at realizing and providing a double vision of equality (increasing the numbers of women in decision making positions throughout the R&I system will reduce the waste of European talents) and opportunity (providing support to the R&I entrerpreneurship based on more effective deployment female human capital, hence offering an important competitive advantage for strengthening the scientific endeavor). Dissemination and exploitation plans of the project results will then ensure the sustaianbility of the action after the ending of the H2020 project.

The Mediterranean basin is famous for its natural diversity, but also an area with pressing environmental problems. Countries on its southern shore are particularly vulnerable to these issues, since their socioeconomic reality is full of difficulties directly connected to their environment: Apart from general issues such as waste management, water and air pollution and their effects on the population’s health, these countries face severe challenges through desertification, deforestation and threats to biodiversity caused directly by environmental change and with severe implications for their economies, especially regarding agriculture and the tourism sector.Consequently, strategic environmental change management will be crucial to seize socioeconomic opportunities linked to environmental change and minimize its risk. Therefore, the wider objective of this project is to enable Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian HEIs to develop and implement a new master’s curriculum in the field of Mediterranean Environmental Change Management. Master Study and Ecosystem Building (MEHMED) aligned with the EU Bologna educational approach (duration of 1,5 year, 90 ECTS).To this end, EU HEIs will transfer their knowledge and experience from related degrees to the Partner Country HEIs and participate in the joint development of a new curriculum in accordance with EU and international standards and labour-market requirements to prepare students to apply their knowledge, skills and competences in the field of environment and sustainable development. The new master will assume an interdisciplinary approach, through the collaboration of various faculties and by involving graduate students from different academic fields. MEHMED will be developed in collaboration with various Algerian, Moroccan and Tunisian public and private stakeholders in the environmental sector, and include an internship module thematically linked to the students’ master’s theses to improve alumni’s employability.

By bringing together all the 13 Tunisian public universities, the Tunisian Ministry of Higher Education (MESRS) and two other very important players such as the ANPR and the IEAQA, the DIRASA Project has the objective to contribute to the improvement of the university research governance in Tunisia by promoting dialogue and scientific cooperation between the actors of the Tunisian national research system. In particular, DIRASA aims to strengthen the capacities of strategic monitoring and scientific foresight process through the improvement of the skills of university staff, by enhancing the visibility of university research and by developing interactions between research and the socio-economic environment.Because of these objectives, DIRASA highlight the new technologies in higher education that are needed for the development of the higher education sector and for its links with society through the creation of a Network at a national level where universities, research units and laboratories, research centres work together to apply the research products into the local context.Three are the main target groups of the project’s actions: the leaders (rectors, vice-rectors, heads of institutions and departments, deans and vice-deans in charge of university research) of Tunisian universities; administrative and academic staff as well as those in charge of research management and administration, who are responsible for the operational management of research; and finally, researchers and doctoral students, who will benefit from the training provided by the project. In addition to these target groups, there are also representatives of general society (policy makers, other national and local institutions that are not consortium partners) who will actively participate in the cooperation workshop still planned by the project.