Main objectives: This WP is dedicated to the actual management of the project, mainly the coordination between partners, and the realisation of the objectives and dedicated tasks.
What has been done and next steps: The project has been launched during a kick-off event in Brussels in October 2025, where partners refined the initial project onto precise milestones, deliverables and timeline, and agreed on the coordination methodologies and processes. Since then, monthly and semester online consortium meetings are organized to follow up the project planning.
The next in-person coordination meeting will be held in July 2026 at the occasion of Living Knowledge 11th conference in Gdànsk. A first intermediate report will be published on march 2027.
WP2
Building interdisciplinary communities of interest and launching community engaged research projects into and across courses and/or faculties
Coordinator:
ULB
Main objectives: In this work package we will launch and sustain Community Engaged Researches (CER), ranging from student-led projects to larger-scale initiatives funded to address challenges identified by civil society. TOGETHERNESS plans to address the local topics starting from mono-disciplinary explorations, which will progressively constitute a body of knowledge nurturing subsequent studies from other disciplinary perspectives. The goal here is to develop the academics abilities regarding interdisciplinarity, hence allowing transdisciplinarity collaborations to address complex societal challenges. ULB will coordinate the methodology; TUD, UNISS and ULB will deploy CER on their own territories.
What has been done and next steps: We have organised a two-parts webinar: the first transnational part gathered CSO and academics to present them TOGETHERNESS intentions and opportunities, while the second part redirected participants into local sessions to identify challenges from their territory and the possibility to engage in CER. Based on this first event, each academic partner (TUD, UNISS, ULB) will develop the CER agenda and dynamics based on their local research and teaching practices, preexisting collaborations with CSO, and territorial challenges and opportunities. The next step is to launch first exploratory collaborative research in each of the 3 territories by the beginning of 2026-2027 academic year.
The methodologies and practices we will experiment during TOGETHERNESS to sustain CER dynamics will be in a handbook for dissemination.
Main objectives: We will develop and pilot innovative flexible professional development to upskill university staff, students and CSO partners for community engaged research. We will facilitate, evaluate and improve these pilot courses, and publish the training materials as Open Educational Resources. We will run ‘training for trainers’ workshops and drop-in support sessions to enable other universities and CSOs to replicate our training. TU Dublin will lead on this, alongside ULB, supported by SC and UNISS.
What has been done and next steps: We have also developed 5 digital badges on Community Engaged Research, which can be combined and traded in for the micro-credential, along with 2 digital badges on Community Engaged Research and Learning, specifically for lecturers who want to build CER into the curriculum. These 7 digital badges are formally approved by TU Dublin. Later in June we will start advertising the training, and recruiting participants from the 3 universities and their CSO partners, and partners in the French-speaking Science Shop network. We will also develop workshops for students on doing CER. Over the summer we will be developing the training materials for these pilots, so that we are ready to start facilitating them from September.
Main objectives: Work Package 4 focuses on building and institutionalising partnerships between universities and Civil Society Organisations (CSOs). Led by UNISS and involving all four partner institutions, it develops structures, agreements, and frameworks that make university-community collaboration genuinely sustainable. It challenges symbolic engagement by asking who shapes research agendas, whose knowledge counts, and how universities can listen as well as speak.
What has been done and next steps: WP4 builds on extensive experience in community-based participatory research, including the decade-long Santa Maria di Pisa Lab in Sassari, which evolved into the P.I.S.A. platform for active social inclusion. The work package is currently mapping partnership models across Europe, with attention to power dynamics, formality, and failure. It will produce a best practices framework, three Memoranda of Understanding signed with local CSOs in Italy, Ireland, and Belgium, a multilingual policy brief, and a practical toolbox for universities and CSOs to develop their own partnerships.
WP5
Enriching, Networking, Evaluating, Communicating & Disseminating
Coordinator:
Sciences Citoyennes
Main objectives: This WP aims to connect this project to its academic, societal and political environment, so that it can benefit and learn from the results of other projects, as well as feeding learning into current and future ones. A part of the work will be devoted to take advantage of the expertise of the members of the Living Knowledge (LK) network, to which the partners belong, on the subjects studied in WP2, WP3 and WP4. Then the WP will give them, as well as all interested organisations or individuals, the benefit of the results of the work carried out in this project, to enable them to discuss the early drafts of outputs and then to compile feedback and recommendations into an online FAQ. A website, newsletters and multiple posts on social media will also be published to promote the projects outcome.
What has been done and next steps: We organized an initial round of focus groups (2) and interviews (3) with experts on Community Engaged Research (CER) involved in the Living Knowledge network. The aim was to share with them the initial work, hypotheses, and methodologies proposed by the three project partners—TU Dublin, ULB, and UNISS—to gather their feedback and allow them to contribute their experiences to the project. The insights gained from these discussions will be incorporated into an online FAQ on the project website, making best practices in CER accessible to as many people as possible. This FAQ is expected to be continuously updated throughout the project: two additional rounds of focus groups and interviews are planned for 2027 and 2028. At the same time, efforts to promote Togetherness and disseminate its outcomes are underway: the project website, presentations of Togetherness at international events (the 11th Living Knowledge Conference in Gdańsk, the Fourth International Conference of the journal “Scuola Democratica”), …