Doctoral Training Partnerships: a range of postgraduate training is funded by the Research Councils. For information on current funding routes, see the common terminology at https://www.ukri.org/apply-for-funding/how-we-fund-studentships/. Training grants may be to one organisation or to a consortia of research organisations. This portal will show the lead organisation only.

The 'worlds' animation presents us with often bear little relation to our own, except through spatial cues, anthropomorphism and an array of aesthetic references to fine arts and other creative practice. The project on animation spectatorship explores and describes strategies viewers develop to comprehend and understand the fine-arts based and digital animated 'Worlds'. Film Studies debates of the 'active' spectator, phenomenology and cognitive theory are augmented by interdisciplinary excursions into art and architecture, metaphysical philosophy, literature and critical theory. The project develops theoretical approaches and a critical language sensitive to the multimedia complexities of the animated form.

Wearable technologies aimed at private consumers constitute a nascent market, expected to grow very fast. Their disruptive power is exemplified by the competition between established technology giants and start-ups. In particular, the development of the wearable market relies on its capacity to break down barriers between creative industries and digital technology companies. At the core of this market is the amount of data that wearable technologies allow to capture, in particular over their users’ personal data. This raises ethical issues regarding the ownership of this data, and what wearable providers do with that data, among other ethical issues, such as labour issues manufacturing, and mineral sourcing in the supply chain. There is a need to raise awareness around such issues, while ensuring the continued development of the wearable technology and smart textiles industries. WEAR proposes to bring wearable technology stakeholders to work more closely with designers and artists across Europe to shift the development of the EU wearable industry, drawing on the rich European landscape of wearable technology and smart textile stakeholders, toward addressing the core issues head on within the research & development stages. To do so, WEAR will: Develop a sustainable European network of stakeholders and hubs, to connect and push the boundaries in the design and development of wearables; Encourage cross-border and cross-sector collaboration between creative people and technology developers to design and develop wearables ; Develop a framework within which future prototypes can be made that will become the next generation of what ethical and aesthetic wearables could/should be; Lead the emergence of innovative approaches to design, production, manufacturing and business models for wearable technologies; Make citizens, entrepreneurs and other stakeholders more aware of the ethical and aesthetic issues in making and use of wearable technologies

Sustainable development and circular economy require balancing between environmental, economic and social benefits and de-coupling the economic growth from resource use. The European New Green Deal highlights the need for reliable, comparable and verifiable sustainability information. Existing sustainability assessment approaches suffer from lack of comprehensiveness, consistency and practical tools for implementation. This results in fragmented and hardly comparable information on product sustainability performance. The ORIENTING project takes up this challenge and develops a robust and operational methodology for the life cycle sustainability assessment (LCSA) of products and services. The novelty value of the project relates to an approach that considers environmental, social and economic impacts in an integrated way. The ambition is to develop a methodology that can assess goods produced under linear as well as circular business models, allowing practitioners to understand and manage possible trade-offs. ORIENTING contributes to the development of a future Product Sustainability Footprint at European level, evolving existing PEF and designing new indicators for the evaluation of material criticality and product circularity. New tools will be developed to support and simplify the methodology application in business and policy development. Tools include guidance and training materials, data and software specifications and a hands-on LCSA IT tool. The LCSA methodology and its enabling tools are demonstrated in five industrial case studies. The consortium works in close cooperation with various stakeholders (industry associations and clusters, SMEs, consumer organisations, as well as governmental and standardisation bodies). The project outcomes will enable informed business decisions and contribute to the development of a levelled playing field – a single market – for products based on robust (i.e. transparent and verifiable) sustainability information.