Una Europa Doctoral Network - Call for Interest

Nature-Based Solutions (NBSs) to societal challenges consist of measures deeply inspired and supported by nature. NBSs have been developed and exploited in climate mitigation and adaptation challenges, and recently extended to other contexts relevant to human life and sustainability by focussing also on their institutionalization and implementation (i.e., policy and financial sustainability).

The strong interdisciplinarity surrounding the implementation of NBSs reflects the complexity of their purpose. In fact, effective NBSs should consider the climatic, environmental, social, economic and political aspects simultaneously, accounting for the co-benefits for the stakeholders and the resulting trade-off reduction. Moreover, NBSs are increasingly seen as a solution for the achievement of several sustainable development goals by bringing a set of societal benefits.

Based on this, the proposed Doctoral Network (DN) aims at training Doctoral Candidates (DCs) on the development and implementation of NBSs, with a particular focus on resilient cities and communities. Our goal is to implement a doctoral programme by partnerships of organisations from different sectors across Europe and beyond to train highly skilled doctoral candidates, stimulate their creativity, enhance their innovation capacities and boost their employability in the long-term.

The proposal is intended to be submitted at the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions call HORIZON MSCA-2022-DN-01: MSCA Doctoral Networks 2022 with deadline on 15 November 2022. University of Bologna will coordinate the network providing expertise on NBSs on road and transport sustainability and pluvial and coastal flood risk management. University of Bologna is proposing the present call for interest in order to improve and complete the network within the Una Europa members. University of Helsinki and Universidad Complutense de Madrid are already part of the doctoral network as beneficiary and Una Europa is participating in the network as Associated Partner.

Therefore, we are looking for potential partners active on the following research topics:

• NBSs for road and transport sustainability
• Urban Planning, regeneration and well-being through NBSs
• NBSs towards building sustainability (sustainable use of matter and energy)
• NBSs for pluvial and coastal flood risk management
• NBSs driven water treatment, recovery and reuse
• NBSs for air/carbon sequestration
• NBSs for biodiversity and ecosystems protection
• Human factor/behaviour and social impact of NBSs
• Policy and Communication solution for NBSs implementation
• Economic and financial sustainability of NBSs

Deadline for expression of interest: April, 6th 2022.

As a side event of Una Europa Seed Funding H-R Hub final conference (Bologna, April 11-12th 2022), a programmatic hybrid meeting (in person and remotely) among interested research groups will take place to discuss the project outline and structure.

Contacts:

Claudio Lantieri – claudio.lantieri2@unibo.it
Serena Ceola – serena.ceola@unibo.it
Alessio Domeneghetti – alessio.domeneghetti@unibo.it

Doctoral Network EU Call: HORIZON-MSCA-2022-DN-01-01: MSCA Doctoral Networks 2022

(For further information see also: https://rea.ec.europa.eu/funding-and-grants/horizon-europe-marie-sklodowska-curie-actions/msca-doctoral-networks_en)