The second Iscte PIONEER Festival was held on July 8th, as part of the International Staff-Week dedicated to the Designing the Future of Urban Living – Well-being, Sustainability and Urban Challenges.
Helena Carreiras, Rector of Iscte, addressed the audience with some opening remarks stressing the importance of opening university to the society followed by the launching of Iscte’s Strategic Plan for Cooperation with External Stakeholders (2026-2030) by Ricardo Paes Mamede, Vice-Rector for Internationalization and Outreach.
Focused on how Iscte is addressing Urban Societal Challenges, the initiative brought together more than 100 national and international participants to discuss the role of universities in responding to concrete urban challenges, such as healthcare services, sustainability, housing and digital transformation. Worth mentioning the participation of several PIONEER Associated Partners, as the Municipality of Sintra, Municipality of Lisbon, Lisbon Metropolitan Area (AML), as well as the Municipality of Cascais, Centre for Planning and Evaluation of Public Policies (PLANAPP), Portuguese Railroad (CP), Institute for the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, I.P. (IDiPD, I.P.) among many others.
Throughout the day, four thematic panels were dedicated to challenge-based education, impact driven research, international mobility and cooperation, and academic entrepreneurship. Iscte expertise and actions in these areas were made visible, and allowed academic staff (teachers and researchers), students, PIONEER Alliance partners and representatives from the local ecosystem to share their ideas and expectations for future cooperation.
Several PIONEER partners, namely, Marcela Barčáková from University of Zilina (UNIZA), Robin Pereboom from Avans University of Applied Sciences (AVANS), Lorena Canaku from Università Iuav di Venezia (IUAV) and Julio Jose Caparros Mancera from University of Huelva (UHU) participated in the panels emphasising experiences from different European universities in this domain and explore future actions to be developed together.
A live podcast on Urban Challenges was broadcasted, bringing together the academic perspective, through the participation of the Vice-rector of Iscte, Ricardo Paes Mamede and Cristina Catalanotti, Research Manager from IUAV, and the views of a local ecosystem partner of the Lisbon Metropolitan area, by Filipa Guimarães from AML.
This event aimed at further opening the doors of Iscte for resuming the already existing initiatives of collaboration with external partners and fostering new actions together with representatives of partner universities, researchers, students, decision-makers, institutional partners and civil society organizations.
