Transmitting Contentious Cultural Heritages with the Arts: From Intervention to Co-Production (TRACES) aims to provide new directions for cultural heritage institutions to contribute productively to evolving European identity and reflexive Europeanization. To do so, it deploys an innovative ethnographic/artistic approach, focused on a wide range of types of ‘contentious heritage.’ Attention to contentious heritage is crucial as it is especially likely to raise barriers to inclusivity and convivial relations, as well as to be difficult to transmit to the public. Transmitted effectively, however, it is potentially especially productive in raising critical reflection and contributing to reflexive Europeanization, in which European identity is shaped by self-awareness and on-going critical reflection. Through rigorous and creative in-depth artistic/ethnographic research, TRACES will provide a systematic analysis of the challenges and opportunities raised by transmitting contentious, awkward and difficult pasts. It will do so by setting up Creative Co-Productions (CCPs) in which artists, researchers, heritage agencies and stakeholders work together in longer term engagements to collaboratively research selected cases of contentious heritage and develop new participatory public interfaces. These will be documented and analysed, including educational research. These interfaces, which include online as well as physical exhibitions and other formats, are part of the significant output planned for TRACES, along with academic publications and a novel reflective Contentious Heritage Manual that will synthesise results to provide directions for future practical reflexive transmission of cultural heritage in Europe. TRACES is a multi-disciplinary team, bringing together established and emerging scholars, and providing high-level expertise, relevant experience and creative energy, to provide a rigorous and innovative approach to the transmission of European cultural heritage.

ALMOA will train the next generation of highly skilled researchers and managers in Applied Mathematics, Operations Research, and Computer Science, to face identified needs in areas such as Sustainable Energy Systems, Green Logistics, Green Data Science, and Natural Sciences. 13 Doctoral Candidates (DC) will be educated through an innovative and effective training programme based on individual, original research projects motivated by these applications. Through the complementary competencies in our research teams of preeminent optimisation experts and practitioners from leading European industries, we will employ multiple perspectives on optimisation to conceive and produce the mathematical foundations, solution methods, and corresponding software. Crossing borders between the optimisation areas often yields brilliant outcomes, hence we see great innovative potential by means of a combination of mixed-integer nonlinear, uncertainty, multilevel, matrix-valued, hierarchical, and large-scale aspects. Our consortium has an excellent track record of collaboration and training young researchers, having run four MSCA training networks in recent decades. In ALMOA we strive for even higher academic standards. Through secondments to different academic and industrial sites, the DC will be exposed to a broader range of methodological approaches, with the benefit of superior collaborative supervision by academic and industrial partners with international visibility. By gaining transferable skills, the DC will be entrepreneurial and resilient researchers, able to face current and future challenges and to convert knowledge and ideas into products and services. Cross-cultural experiences will broaden their horizons and ALMOA will promote global academic citizenship for individuals and institutions. The applications considered as well as following the recommendations in the MSCA Green Charter will have a positive impact towards an environmentally sustainable future.