The EIRENE project’s purpose is to think afresh 20th-century post-war transitions by taking into account a gendered perspective. Namely, the historiographic consideration of gender thoroughly alters the understanding of social dynamics in multi-ethnic areas during the post-war transitions. They will be observed in the North-Eastern Adriatic region, an overlooked European space, marked by border redefinitions, changes of political systems, and high interethnic conflict intensity, but also by genuine cooperation among ethnic groups. The region has all the qualities of a “laboratory environment” for the study of gender positions and interrelations after World Wars I and II and after the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s. The project will differ substantially from previous attempts to analyse post-war transitions in these aspects: a) longitudinal approach, comparing three post-war periods in order to detect their specifics and (dis)continuities; b) transnational approach, by overcoming nation-centric frameworks of analysis; c) by combining conceptual political and social sciences with historiography; and finally, d) by examining post-war transitions through the prism of gender. Focusing on four research-fields (politics, political violence, work, family), the project will validate innovative analytical concepts of the “inclusion-exclusion paradox” of women in post-war transitions, and women as “cross-boundary mediators”. Within the category of gender, focal attention will be given to women as they are often invisible in historical accounts and remain neglected in historicizing. By aggregating empirical sources, the project will approach the proposed subject matter by investigating the processes of identification across the lines of ethnic origin, class, generations, marital status, profession/occupation, language of use, migratory processes, etc. The project’s added value is its novel conceptual applicability to other comparable geopolitical areas.

The project will establish the ERA Chair Of Micro Process Engineering and TEchnology – COMPETE. It is designed to capitalise on microfluidics research and technology, an existing knowledge base of University of Ljubljana (UL) to a leading European hub of microfluidics expertise. Microfluidics offers huge potential for new solutions in biomedicine, biotechnology, food quality assessment and environmental protection, and is directly in line with the Slovenian Smart Specialization Strategy. To achieve this ambition, the Chair will integrate micro-process engineering disciplines – chemical, mechanical and electrical engineering – with basic research in biophysics, chemistry and microbiology in order to overcome the main barriers for research excellence in this highly interdisciplinary field. COMPETE will address the lack of institutional organization connecting research teams and infrastructure within UL, lack of financing, and practice not in line with open recruitment policy. Attracting a Chair Holder with excellent research credentials and leadership competences, thus creating a research team with broad expertise and wide network for collaboration that will greatly improve the culture of research and research performance at UL. Cooperation with other research, industrial, governmental and non-governmental entities and dissemination are key activities that will complement internal structural changes and help build sustainability and a wider impact of the Chair as a leading regional centre for micro-process engineering. Sustainability will be granted by research funding procurement for projects, structured cooperation with industrial and public research and educational entities, establishment of a new study field in the doctoral programs at UL, PhD summer school and other training programs. By setting a best practice example and through a well-thought outreach campaign the project will stimulate structural changes throughout UL

This research program will address the curvature properties of two important classes of complex manifolds: Kobayashi hyperbolic manifolds and Oka manifolds. These manifolds are characterized by a degree of holomorphic rigidity and flexibility, respectively, and have appeared in many branches of mathematics, from number theory to algebraic and differential geometry. A grasp of the curvature properties of these manifolds will offer valuable insights into their geometry, facilitate the generation of examples, and elucidate their relationship to important classes of manifolds---for instance, rationally connected manifolds, which play a central role in algebraic geometry. The experienced researcher (ER) has established major improvements in the main techniques that are used in the differential geometric study of Kobayashi hyperbolic manifolds, namely the Schwarz lemma. On the other hand, the field of Oka manifolds has seen tremendous growth primarily from the work of the host supervisor, who is the world leader in the subject, and a world leader in complex analysis more generally. The research program will not only merge these areas of expertise but also merge the complex analysis and differential geometry communities. The action will consist of a high transfer of knowledge to the ER, the host supervisor, and the host organization. The results of the action will be disseminated through online video platforms within which the ER has established himself as an experienced and proficient member.

Neuroinformatics (NI) is now an essential approach in brain research, to organise, analyse, integrate and interpret an increasing volume of diverse, multi-dimensional, fine-grain neuroscience data. University of Ljubljana's (UL's) challenges in this field are suboptimal research management & open innovation (OI), slow pace of structural changes, limited research excellence in NI, and lack of innovative NI training at the undergraduate, graduate and postdoc levels. The proposed ERA-Chair Project will enable UL, located in a low R&I performing country, to create appropriate conditions and opportunities for a high-quality researcher & research manager (ERA-Chair holder, ECH) to address these challenges and foster sustainable NI excellence as well as training in research management & administration. The selected ECH, with an academic rank of Professor or equivalent, will lead UL's Chair of NI (CONI) and will have the authority and autonomy to apply for funding, manage and develop CONI, and develop independent lines of research. The ECH will be supported by 4 research fellows, a Data & OI Manager, and a Public Relations Manager. CONI will have access to existing multimodal and multidimensional clinical data from Alzheimer’s disease patients, including national and international data, for research into computer generated multi-domain markers and advanced clinical ICT tools. ECH & CONI's staff will have full access to UL's research infrastructure and capital equipment. UL's senior research staff will assist ECH & CONI's staff to participate in UL’s under graduate, graduate and postdoc programs, to integrate CONI into UL's national and international NI research network and to implement structural changes at the UL. Collaboration will be established with healthcare data SMEs and a stakeholder network. In 5 years, the ECH will apply or co-apply for 20 national or international grants; publish 20 high-impact research papers, and mentor or co-mentor, 15 MSc and 15 PhD students.

The proposed project (DACES) aims to test, validate and promote a blended learning toolkit for teaching and learning (EU) citizenship that we constructed under the ACES JM EU @ School project. This toolkit that tackles growing alienation, lack of knowledge and distrust of (young) EU citizens from European institutions and EU at large (see EC, 2010; Hoskins et al., 2012) is aimed at fostering reflective learning process (Wales and Clarke, 2005) resting on a circular mode (Radovan, 2014) constructivist pedagogical paradigm (Williams, 2010) and freely open educational platform (Moodle). The tool is focused on learning about the rights of EU citizenship, the role of the EU and citizenship in general and aims to foster knowledge on EU citizenship in content dimension (subject matter), affective- behavioral dimension (student perceptions and activities) and cognitive dimension (thinking processes) (see Shulz et al., 2008).Since Slovene educational system rests on high level of teacher's curriculum autonomy (Žakelj et al., 2013) and lack of appropriate educational tools for teaching (EU) citizenship (Zimšek and Deželan, 2013) along with the absence of such structured experience within youth organizations (Skrinar, 2014), we aim to conduct a pilot study on the benefits of the toolkit in terms of knowledge, skills and competences for participating students in order to assure the quality of the toolkit. We shall test the toolkit within general secondary (Gimnazija MS), technical and vocational secondary schools (Piramida MB) as well as youth centres (MB, MS) that already agreed to participate. The quality assurance of the study (in line with ENQA, ENQAVET) is assured with participation of the The Education Development Office of the ministry of education, thus creating also a direct link with the policy makers. Based on this study, a series of promotional activities and publication are planned to promote the tool to policy makers, practitioners and wider audience.