The EUPOLE project aims to generate new knowledge and insights into the EU’s polar interests and provide a succinct understanding of the EU as a global polar actor. EUPOLE seeks to better understand the opportunities and challenges posed to Brussels by contemporary Arctic and Antarctic geopolitics.EUPOLE will potentially assist the EU in shaping future policies toward both the Arctic and Antarctic regions. EUPOLE will foster a dialogue through its activities which bridges the academic and policy sectors and creates a long-term community of researchers and policymakers in the field of polar security. The project will generate new knowledge to strengthen the role of the EU in a globalized world – particularly, in terms of how the institution could become a global polar stakeholder. EUPOLE’s long-term polar community will develop on the back of an inaugural Polar Experts Workshop (PEW). This activity serves to answer the project’s three key research questions: 1. What are EU polar interests and how to they differ in the Arctic and Antarctic?2. How should the EU navigate potential security challenges from increased polar interest from Russia and China?3. What should EU polar identity and therefore strategy look like in the future?PEW delegates reflect the overall interdisciplinary approach of EUPOLE, with the policy, academia, civil servant and media sectors all represented in the workshop. This ensures ample exchange between the research and practice components of EUPOLE. The project addresses a clear need. At present there is a gulf between EU polar interests and a clearly communicated strategy. The EU has legitimate interests in the polar regions and should harness its global platform to be a polar leader, particularly in the climate security sphere given EU values. EUPOLE endeavors to research, debate and reflect on the avenues for the EU to emerge as a global polar actor in both the Arctic and Antarctic.

The movement of refugees is one of the most pressing governance challenges of our time. In seeking to control – or prevent - the access of arrivals to their territory, Australia, the European Union (EU) and its member states employ a range of externalisation policies. These policies operate beyond the state to disrupt migration pathways by preventing individuals from reaching or entering a state's territory. Externalisation policies reshape the boundaries of sovereignty and blur the lines of responsibility among states. By avoiding their legal and political responsibility, many states violate their legal obligations. Externalisation deflects responsibility, transforming the governance of refugee protection and border control. Regional cooperation for refugee protection is weakened, and human rights protections are undermined. At a global level, migration pathways are disrupted, and refugees are often trapped in transit, placing them at risk. Nationally, some governments gain electoral advantage by being “tough” on border protection. The accelerating phenomenon of externalisation characterising these “tough” border protection policies requires a comprehensive analysis by researchers, civil society actors, refugees, and policy makers.The Comparative Network on Refugee Externalisation Policies (CONREP) researches the impact and effects of the externalisation of refugee policies in two regions: Australia’s activities in Southeast Asia and the Pacific; and the European Union and its member states’ activities in North Africa and the Mediterranean. These policies exploit power asymmetries to transfer state and regional obligations and responsibility for asylums seekers and refugees to neighbouring states. At their most destructive, externalisation policies can prevent refugees from reaching safety, and breach their human rights.CONREP has worked to sharpen our understanding of the dynamics behind these towards externalisation by focusing its activities on five core themes:1.Governance: the implications of externalisation policies adopted by state and non-state actors at different levels of governance, including the repercussions for regional governance of the militarisation and securitisation of migration control, and the loss of solidarity and cooperation amongst states and regions.2.Legitimacy: the impact of externalisation policies upon the legitimacy of states and regional bodies deploying these policies.3.Responsibility: an examination of the exercise, delegation and “outsourcing” of legal and political responsibility, in state and non-state actor settings, and its effects upon refugees seeking protection.4.Democracy: an examination of how externalisation shifts the ‘problem’ away from domestic scrutiny within states, towards political narratives of control and resistance to external and internal review and public debate.5.Human rights: the impact of externalisation policies which disrupt migration pathways, upon access to human rights protections for refugees and asylum seekers.CONREP is an interdisciplinary network of researchers from Australia and Europe. It consists of seven partner universities, led by the University of Melbourne. The other six partner universities are Deakin University, Monash University, Western Sydney University, the University of Bologna, the University of Geneva and the University of Gothenburg. Website: https://arts.unimelb.edu.au/school-of-social-and-political-sciences/our-research/comparative-network-on-refugee-externalisation-policies

IMPACT DIABETES B2B will demonstrate the real-world implementation of an evidence-based, low-resource system-level intervention for healthy gestational weight gain and early prevention of maternal and child diabetes, overweight and obesity when delivered ‘at scale’ across antenatal settings. Gestational diabetes affects up to 18% of pregnancies worldwide and is an increasing health problem for both mothers and babies. By identifying those most at risk of developing gestational diabetes and working with them through personalised health coaching delivered via smartphone App, this project will engage, motivate and empower this target group to lead healthier lives for improved wellbeing and pregnancy outcomes. This project will demonstrate implementation within 3 European countries and Australia with clear line-of-sight on future scale-up across different contexts and resource settings via its innovative implementation toolkit and workshops for dissemination and exploitation. Pregnancy is a unique time in life with potential to influence maternal health, and the health of the next generation. IMPACT DIABETES B2B delivers breakthrough research in nutrition, exercise and behaviour change leading to an implementable low-resource system-level intervention. The personalised feedback will empower women to manage their health, delivering cost-effective management of excess gestational and post-pregnancy weight gain to: improve pregnancy and postpartum outcomes; improve utilisation of healthcare services; and encourage ongoing maternal health with sustainable impact for mother and family. Expertise in implementation science, lifestyle change, health psychology, mHealth technology, health economics and health service delivery will lead this mixed methods project. The project will co-design the intervention system, with end-user context and management explored throughout. The work will evaluate clinical, economic and implementation outcomes to inform future practice and policy.

As Europe is growing unchurched, trends of religious radicalisation seem to increase both within the continent and across the world. Claims are made that migrant integration has overall failed because marginalised and radicalised second generation youth turns to jihadist terrorism networks. This research project takes stock of these contradictory trends of increasing secularism and intensifying radicalisation while turning to countries and regions outside Europe to study the challenges of religious diversity and radicalisation that they face and investigate how they deal with them. The project develops its empirical and analytical research along two lines: It looks at regimes for governing religious diversity in Europe (covering western, southern and southeastern Europe), North Africa, the Middle East, south Asia and Oceania. It compares the norms, laws and practices and seeks to assess their relative success in integrating migrants as well as in countering radicalisation trends. By studying countries outside Europe we seek also to analyse the mutual influences and transfers of norms and practices for governing religious diversity between Europe and other continents as well as the legacy of colonialism in this domain. The second line of work concentrates on religious radicalisation focussing on radicalised movements in different countries and their trajectories. Both lines of work relate our discussion of secularisation and radicalisation to wider societal transformation processes of the 21st century (including increased connectivity and inter-dependence, faster transport and communication, widening inequalities, and the concomitant re-emergence of nationalism). The project will deliver innovative academic thinking on secularisation and radicalisation trends today as well as key messages to policy makers with regard to the governance of religious diversity and the struggle against violent radicalisation movements.

CO-CREATE aims to reduce childhood obesity and its co-morbidities by working with adolescents, to create, inform and disseminate obesity-preventive evidence-based policies. The project applies a systems approach to provide a better understanding of how factors associated with obesity interact at various levels. The project focus on adolescence as the specific target group, a crucial age with increasing autonomy and the next generation of adults, parents and policymakers, and thus important agents for change. CO-CREATE involve and empower adolescents and youth organizations to foster a participatory process of identifying and formulating relevant policies, deliberating such options with other private and public actors, promoting relevant policy agenda and tools and strategies for implementation. CO-CREATE strengthen interdisciplinary research and have an inclusive multi-actor approach with involvement of academics, policy makers, civil society, relevant industry and market actors to ensure long-lasting impleme