Subterranean ecosystems host a broad diversity of specialized and endemic organisms that account for a unique fraction of the global taxonomic, phylogenetic, and functional diversity. Furthermore, they deliver crucial nature’s contributions to people—especially the provisioning of potable water to more than half of the world’s population. Yet, these out-of-sight ecosystems are systematically overlooked in post-2020 biodiversity and climate change targets. Only 6.9% of known subterranean ecosystems overlap with the global network of protected areas, with just a few of these areas designed to account for their vertical dimension. Two main impediments are responsible for this lack of protection. First, subterranean biodiversity patterns remain largely unmapped, even in areas with a long speleological tradition such as Europe. Second, we lack a mechanistic understanding of subterranean species' response to human-induced perturbations. The project DarCo aims to map subterranean biodiversity patterns across Europe and develop an explicit plan to incorporate subterranean ecosystems in the European Union (EU) Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. To this end, we have established a multidisciplinary team of leading scientists in subterranean biology, macroecology, and conservation science from a broad range of European countries. The project is articulated in three interconnected work packages devoted to direct research (WP2–4), plus a fourth package (WP5) aimed at maximizing the dissemination of results and engagement of stakeholders to implement practical conservation. First, by compiling existing databases and leveraging a capillary network of international collaborators, we will gather distribution data, traits, and phylogenies for all major subterranean animal groups, including crustaceans, mollusks, insects, and vertebrates (WP2). These data will serve to predict species responses to human threats using Hierarchical Modelling of Species Communities (WP3). Models' predictions of biodiversity change will provide the basis for a first dynamic mapping of subterranean life in Europe. By intersecting maps of diversity patterns, threats, and protected areas, we will design a plan to protect subterranean biodiversity complementing the current EU network of protected areas (Natura 2000), while taking into account climate-driven shifts in subterranean ecoregions (WP4). Finally, through target activities in WP5, we seek to raise societal awareness about subterranean ecosystems and invite stakeholders to incorporate subterranean biodiversity in multilateral agreements. In compliance with the European Plan S, we will make all data open and re-usable by the development of a centralized and open database on subterranean life—the Subterranean Biodiversity Platform. This will ensure that future generations will be able to build upon knowledge accumulated on subterranean biodiversity and monitor the effectiveness of today’s protection measures in the years ahead.

To stimulate the economic growth and fight unemployment, the European Commission considers workers’ and citizens’ free mobility as one of the most important rights to encourage, because it is an essential component of the common labour market. Given the context of severe economic crisis that characterises Europe at this historical juncture, and the consequent difficulty of interpreting the needs of a labour market in strong contraction, European workers’ free mobility may contribute greatly to tackle socio-economic changes and thus to achieve the main targets of Europe 2020 Strategy for growth, jobs, social equity and inclusion. However, in order to achieve a strong, sustainable and balanced growth, European Union needs a skilled workforce.The project’s objective is to promote the free and successful movement of workers in Europe through the use of a Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL) methodology. For this purpose, the partnership has developed an Open Educational Resource, the VGCLIL training platform, whose target users are adults, employed and unemployed, who completed/are completing their education and plan to look for a job abroad to start their professional life or to make an experience that will enrich their competences.Partners:INFOREF (BE): non-profit with a long experience in European project management, e-learning, and website development.BEST (AT): provides continuous training, vocational qualification and career services to young (+16) individuals and adults.Universidad de Murcia (ES): university covering 8 scientific areas, including humanities. The involved staff is expert in language learning and linguistics.Apricot (UK): non-profit that contributes to a strong, sustainable and socially inclusive economy by promoting and facilitating learning, training and development in and for the workplace.ASTERES (IT): organises and promotes initiatives to foster workers and citizens’ free mobility and positive inclusion in the job market. They are involved in vocational guidance, language learning and ICT.The training platform was created in partners’ national languages (French, English, Italian, Spanish, German) and structured as a CLIL course with gradual difficulty, to constitute a useful language tool that aims to strengthen the communicative competence of the trainees. It is available for B2 and C1 levels and is divided in 4 modules (job search skills, job applications, interview skills and intercultural skills). Using various supports (texts, videos, audio files…), the platform enhances learners’ communication in a foreign language while providing them with vocational guidance on such topics as: how to write an effective CV and cover letter, how to behave during a job interview, etc. The training platform is freely accessible at http://vgclil.eu/training-platform.Firstly the partners produced two sets of guidelines to produce the materials following the CLIL methodology and regarding content learning. They agreed on the topics to be treated and the form they would have (text, dialogs, videos, audio files, etc.) in order to have homogeneous materials. Each partner produced didactic materials in its own language using the CLIL methodology. A sample of the target groups with different background in terms of age, education, job experience and social status participated in the piloting phase. This phase helped the partners produce the final version of the platform.The project gave the partners a new tool they can use in their training programme and everyday practice, and gave them the opportunity to acquire knowledge about employability in their country and in Europe, to acquaint themselves with the CLIL methodology and to create materials specifically designed for e-learning. The pilot users acquired important knowledge and skills related to job search abroad and to the command of a foreign language. Based on their feedback, users of all countries usually feel better prepared and more confident for their job search. These first results indicate that VGCLIL is relevant and appropriate for its objectives.As long term benefit, VGCLIL will contribute to change European workers’ mindset, and make them plan their professional life not only in national but also in European terms. The project is also going to encourage trainers and guidance operators to include CLIL methodology-based tools into their activities, and will contribute to exploit this effective methodology outside the usual path of formal education demonstrating; it could be particularly useful in the field of adult education. Ultimately the greatest impact will be to contribute in Europe to the fostering of a well-performing training system, which provides European workers with the skills required by the labour market and the economy. The partners and the organisations involved in the project implementation will embed the platform into their usual guidance activities, ensuring the sustainability of the results.

Films are made out of materials, at specific moments in specific places. But while philosophy of film and film-philosophy are today as strong as ever, a certain set of anti-materialist assumptions continues operating in these fields. Philosophers of film tend to treat questions of the materiality of the medium as subordinate to representational and narrative contents. Likewise, philosophical understandings of the ethical and social significance of the filmic medium continue to focus on the contents of films rather than the nature of the medium itself. These approaches can be surprising from the materialist perspectives of avant-garde and experimental cinema. But while philosophy of film and film-philosophy have not yet incorporated the lessons of the materialist avant-garde, traditional film theory has tended to treat certain geographically and nationally specific avant-gardes as though they were geographically neutral: somehow standing in for the rest. Other filmic avant-gardes belonging to other geographic regions, even those articulating compelling and innovative material views of the medium, have gotten lost. Nevertheless, a unified, materialist philosophical view of film emerges once we pay attention to the Ibero-American avant-garde, which we can call “recurrentist materialism”. Indeed, paying greater attention to recurrentist materialism and the Ibero-American avant-garde can provide an important alternative to dominant anti-materialist and geographically natural pictures in contemporary philosophy of film and film-philosophy. This is what the researcher will undertake throughout the 24 months of the fellowship through scientific articles, the preparation of a book manuscript, teaching, the organization of a colloquium on the Philosophy of Film, and a two-part film series, which will include invitations to actually practicing filmmakers, as well as two workshops for philosophers on the technical and material properties of film.