WP4

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.