The UN has recently proclaimed 2020-2030 the Decade of Action and its top priority is fighting violent extremism. This call is grounded in the insufficient progress achieved despite the vast efforts from Governments and scholars to tackle this issue. The main shortcomings of previous approaches are (1) theoretical (poor consensus about the nature and causes), (2) empirical (infrequent access to populations of interest), and (3) methodological (research designs that do not allow to test for causality, no comparative studies, over-reliance on qualitative data). I am going to introduce and test empirically the first comprehensive multi-theoretical framework for the study of radicalization leading to violence and deradicalization by understanding its nature to develop intervention programs. In part one (WP1) I will develop a multi-theory model for the nature and mechanisms underlying radicalization leading to violence and deradicalization. In WP2 I will develop an innovative methodology to assess these processes by a platform for data collection including dynamic and interactive measures of radicalization and deradicalization in large samples in five continents. WP3 will examine the mechanisms underlying radicalization outside and inside prisons in 10 nations (Spain, Iraq, Indonesia, Sri-Lanka, Colombia, Morocco, Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia, Jordan) through interviews, combined with online cross-sectional and longitudinal experiments to allow the inference of causality. WP4 will focus on the development of evidence-based programs designed to prevent radicalization in prisons and to conduct de-radicalization with incarcerated violent extremist offenders. The contributions of this framework are twofold: a) advancing the scientific understanding of violent extremism by collecting unique empirical data from samples of violent extremist offenders collected worldwide, and b) providing novel evidence-based strategies and tools for predicting and preventing violent extremism.

The overall research goal of this proposal is to develop a multidisciplinary study of the little known long-necked dinosaurs of North Africa using virtual paleontology techniques (developed in my PhD thesis) histological data on the fossil material, pneumatic apparatus reconstruction and phylogenetic analysis to understand the significance of a range of new species. The project will have a major impact in the fields of paleontology and biology, generating critical new data on the large terrestrial vertebrates of a major continent during a period of the Mesozoic that experienced sea level and temperature changes resulting in major extinctions. The fossil material comprises the single largest undescribed fauna from any major continent during the latter half of the Mesozoic. The high-profile scientific results to come from this research over two-years in the Department of Organismal Biology (University of Chicago), under the supervision of Prof. Sereno, will boost my academic profile and experience in the fields of paleontology and evolution, significantly increasing the chance to continue my career by leading a multidisciplinary and diverse research group in the field of paleobiology in Europe.

This project aims at bridging the digital gap among traditional cultural assets and the growing world of data. It is focused on poetry analysis, classification and publication, applying Digital Humanities methods of academic analysis -such as XML-TEI encoding- in order to look for standardization. Interoperability problems between the different poetry collections are solved by using semantic web technologies to link and publish literary datasets in a structured way in the linked data cloud. The advantages of making poetry available online as machine-readable linked data are threefold: first, the academic community will have an accessible digital platform to work with poetic corpora and to contribute to its enrichment with their own texts; second, this way of encoding and standardizing poetic information will be a guarantee of preservation for poems published only in old books or even transmitted orally, as texts will be digitized and stored as XML files; third: datasets and corpora will be available and open access to be used by the community for other purposes, such as education, cultural diffusion or entertainment. To accomplish such a ground-breaking approach, I have a hybrid profile, combining a strong philological background, specialized in poetry and metrics, with a deep knowledge of Digital Humanities proven by my leadership and experience in interdisciplinary projects. Since 2011, I am the Principal Investigator of the first Digital Repertoire of Medieval Spanish Poetry (ReMetCa), an innovative project that combines traditional metrical analysis with digital text encoding, and since 2014 I am the Academic Director of LINHD, The Digital Humanities Innovation Lab created at UNED as a research interdisciplinary centre.

The FernUniversität in Hagen, the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED) and the Open Universiteit Nederland (OUNl) are three leading European distance learning universities firmly devoted to further the principle of equal opportunity by safeguarding equal access to top quality higher education to everyone, using a methodology based on the principles of modern distance learning focused on the needs of the student. In 2014, after eight years of successful cooperation in the organization of international common teaching activities on the bachelor level, these universities established a Strategic Partnership to further cultural exchange and best practices in the internationalisation of high quality education in law for all three Bologna cycles. Developed within this framework, the EDELNet (European Distance Education in Law Network) project is the first building block in the implementation of an ambitious scientific and pedagogic concept of Blended Active Learning and student oriented teaching facilitating a personal learning path with an emphasis on interdisciplinary and intercultural communication skills as a basis for a better understanding of each other’s legal cultures and practices throughout Europe and beyond.The goals of this project address the current need in the European society for widening the access to top quality higher education through international academic cooperation, as identified in the 2011 EU Modenisation Agenda (COM (2011) 567 final). For this purpose, EDELNet is geared toward the modernization of teaching methods in law with an innovative combination of student-centered blended learning tools and activities. This innovative combination also draws on intercultural communication and interdisciplinary processes for the production, learning and application of relevant inter-subjective knowledge in addition to the traditional contents of legal education. This will be implemented through an international and cross-cultural cooperation that is devised to broaden access to and participation in international and European education, especially for disadvantaged groups such as students with disabilities, economic, social or geographical obstacles, health problems or cultural differences.In order to achieve these goals the EDELNet project aims to develop and implement virtual and face-to-face teaching and training activities and courseware in key methodological and substantive areas of the law, including language competences, intercultural communication skills and interdisciplinary methods of knowledge production applied to legal practice and scholarship.The EDELNet project is based on the full commitment and support of the key academic and administrative units of the three partner universities, especially those working in the fields of quality management, IT and media, dissemination and knowledge transfer, and the central management units (Deans’ and Rectors’ offices).On completion of the project more than 200 persons have participated in our learning activities. 153 students participated in our LLB, LLM and PhD intensive study programs and more than 180 in the different virtual mobility courses hosted in the EDELNet Vortal. Also more than 50 teachers and managerial staff have partaken in our staff trainings. Moreover, the produced courseware, the results of the learning activities, and the institutional know-how acquired is available as open source on the EDELNet Vertical Portal. The availability as open source of these project results is coupled with active dissemination activities, like the organisation and participation in international and national workshops, newsletters and the active engagement in cooperative dialogues with a wide range of relevant stakeholders. In the timespan of the project (2015-2018) our students and staff had a high quality international experience that has enriched their learning and professional paths; overcame language inhibitions by taking English as a common language; and cultivated their intercultural competences while operating in a cross-cultural environment. The project did also grant students easy access to an international network of professionals of the law, including both academic and practitioners. All this has decisively improved our students’ chances to get access to the international and European labour market and has brought forward our plans to merger different European teaching cultures, traditions and didactic formats to improve teaching practice in the entire European community of law teaching. In the long run, we expect students from associated universities and other potential public and private institutions from all over Europe and beyond to participate in our program and benefit from the EDELNet project results. Through affordable, relevant, high quality and internationalized higher blended-learning education in the field of law, we expect our project to contribute to a sustainable and inclusive growth in the European Union.