1. Participation of the Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge,BAS in Horizon2020 Projects as well as in Research Infrastructures
Prof. Rumiana Stoilova
Round Table Discussion with the participation of Robert-Jan Smits, General Director of the Directorate “Scientific Research and Innovations "at the European Commission
26 June 2017
Sofia Tech Park

2. TOP 10 BULGARIAN BENEFICIARIES – HORIZON 2020 for 2015
NAME OF THE INSTITUTION
EU FINANCIAL CONTRIBUTION
€ million
SOFIA UNIVERSITY
1,1
ONTOTEXT AD
0,75
INSTITUTE OF INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION
TECHNOLOGIES
0,68
TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF SOFIA
0,59
APPLIED RESEARCH AND COMMUNICATIONS FUND
0,56
PENSOFT PUBLISHER Ltd
0,55
ETEM BULGARIA AD
0,54
BLACK SEA ENERGY RESEARCH CENTER
0,52
TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF VARNA
0,51
INSTITUTE FOR THE STUDY OF SOCIETIES AND KNOWLEDGE
0,47

3. ISSK is among the TOP 10 BULGARIAN BENEFICIARIES in HORIZON 2020
ISSK is placed among the top 10 universities and think tank groups in Bulgaria , which received grants in Horizon Having in mind the relative small amount of the budgets in social sciences, and that the ranking accounts for the budgets, taking place among top 10 is a very satisfactory fact.

4. Horizon 2020 Projects for 2017
NEGOTIATE , Horizon 2020: Grant agreement No , team leader Prof. Rumiana Stoilova
EXCEPT, Horizon 2020 , Grant agreement No , team leader Assoc. Prof. Maria Jeliazkova
ENLIVEN , Horizon 2020, team leader Prof.Pepka Bojadjieva
SHARE European Research Infrastructure Consortium (SHARE-ERIC) – team leader Dr. Ekaterina Markova

5.
Project title: NEGOTIATE – Negotiating early job insecurity and labour market exclusion in Europe.
Duration: 36 months from March 2015 – March 2018
Participants: academic organizations from Norway (coordinator), Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Spain, Poland, Czech Republic, UK ,Switzerland.
Scientific coordinator: NOVA Norwegian Social Research, Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences

6. PROJECT OVERVIEW
NEGOTIATE (Negotiating early job-insecurity and labour market exclusion in Europe) is a research project centered on young people in Europe. The project’s overarching objective - to provide new, gender-sensitive, comparative knowledge about the short- and long-term consequences of early job insecurity, taking into account how the active agency of young people mediates such consequences.
General labour market processes and a severe employment crisis currently define the macro level.
The organisation of meso level structures creates differential access to public and private support within and across countries.
The micro level is characterised by young people with unequal opportunities to influence individual job prospects.
The project examines the long- and short-term consequences of experiencing job insecurity or labour market exclusion in the transition to adulthood.

7. WORK PACKAGES 1 4 7 2 5 8 3 6 9 Project Management
Early job insecurity and youth unemployment as a theoretical and societal challenge
Early job insecurity in Europe: Mapping diversity and the impact of the economic crisis
Causes and long term consequences of early job insecurity: Exploring the dynamics of scarring
Negotiating transitions to adulthood in the context of economic crisis - Lead beneficiary ISSK-BAS
Negotiating subjective and objective well-being as consequences of early job insecurity and labour market marginalisation
Understanding employers’ assessments of young job applicants: A comparative vignette experiment- Swiss, Bulgaria, Norway, Greece
Policy coordination in a system of multi-level governance
Dissemination and impact 1 4 7 2 5 8 3 6 9

8. BULGARIAN NEGOTIATE TEAM

9. EXCEPT: Social Exclusion of Youth in Europe: Cumulative Disadvantage, Coping Strategies, Effective Policies and Transfer
Research project under Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Action (call H2020-YOUNG-SOCIETY-2014), receiving funding under grant agreement No
Participants: academic organizations from Estonia (coordinator), Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Sweden, UK & Ukraine.
ISSK role: leader of Work Package 2: “Assessment of the diffusion and effects of youth inclusion policies” & implementing the different types of research in Bulgaria

10. EXCEPT: derived research challenges
To increase the value added of social research by:
Enhancing transition from ‘policy-based’ to ‘evidence-based’ research;
Stimulating independent participatory social impact assessments;
Addressing wellbeing of all by focusing on income policies and growing inequalities;
Providing better links between social research results and decisions taken
To improve social research quality by:
Addressing the problems faced by citizens and reducing the power distances in deciding what is important and what is not, incl. by reviewing the financial flows;
Reviewing research quality indicators instead the over-emphasis on quantitative indicators;
To reconsider the balance between natural and social sciences in a way that is more fruitful for the societies.

11. EXCEPT AND NEGOTIATE: DIFFERENT STRATEGIES TOWARDS A COMMON AIM
“The central aim of the EXCEPT project is to develop effective and innovative policy initiatives to help young people in Europe overcome labour market insecurities and related risks.”
“The overall strategy in NEGOTIATE is to observe the present, learn from the past and to project the future in order to inform policies to prevent labour market exclusion and secure the social inclusion of young people in the short and long term, thereby contributing to reaching the objectives defined in Europe 2020 – the EU’s growth strategy.”
TOWARDS BUILDING AN INCLUSIVE AND FAIR SOCIETY

12. Coordinator: University of Nottingham 10 partners Project duration:
ENLIVEN
Project website
Twitter
@H2020enliven
Facebook page
Coordinator: University of Nottingham
10 partners
Project duration:
1st October 2016 – 30th September 2019

13. WHAT IS ENLIVEN ABOUT?
The ENLIVEN project’s overarching objective is to provide an innovative model and mechanism to support policy debate, policy formation and policy evaluation in lifelong learning. Integrating theoretical and empirical perspectives from social and computer sciences, it focuses on the needs of young adults.
Innovativeness
The ENLIVEN research combines bounded agency theory from the social sciences with case-based reasoning from computer science (in particular, artificial intelligence).
The ENLIVEN enriches theoretical reasoning by further developing concepts, such as bounded agency, multi-level governance, educational/learning generations, multi-level context.
The ENLIVEN research models how policy interventions in adult education can become more effective and implements an innovative Intelligent Decision Support System to provide a new and more scientific underpinning for policy debate and decision-making on adult learning, especially for young adults.

14. MAIN ACTIVITIES
Study of adult learning programmes, policies and governance in Europe, looking at the multi-dimensional nature of social exclusion.
Analysis of the effects of system characteristics on participation in learning activities at country/region/sector levels, with particular concern for disadvantaged groups and youth at risk of exclusion.
Investigation of young adults’ learning at work, undertaking organisational case studies and cross-country comparative institutional analysis.
Development and trial of an Intelligent Decision-making Support System (IDSS) to support evidence-based policy-making and debate.
Project’s relevance for Bulgaria and ISSK – capacity building (knowledge and networking) in the area of lifelong learning; policy relevance – Bulgaria is among the countries with the lowest participation rate in lifelong learning in the EU: 2.2% for 2016; EU average – 10.8%; EU 2020 target - 15%.

15. SHARE – Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe

16. SHARE is centrally coordinated by the Munich Center for the Economics of Aging (MEA), Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy.
SHARE-Bulgaria is coordinated by the Institute for the Study of the Societies and Knowledge at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. SHARE-panel is conducted in Bulgaria for the first time in 2017 with 2000 interviews.
SHARE now covers 26 countries of the European Union as well as Switzerland and Israel.
Thanks to the efforts of the European Commission, SHARE covers all the member states, and it is able to implement a sample size which allows country comparisons for researchers and policy analysts.

17. SHARE has become a major pillar of the European Research Area, selected as one of the projects to be implemented in the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) in 2006 and given a new legal status as the first ever European Research Infrastructure Consortium (SHARE-ERIC) in March 2011.

18. SHARE responds to a Communication by the European Commission calling to "examine the possibility of establishing, in co-operation with Member States, a European Longitudinal Ageing Survey".
SHARE has become a major pillar of the European Research Area, selected as one of the projects to be implemented in the European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures (ESFRI) in 2006 and given a new legal status as the first ever European Research Infrastructure Consortium (SHARE-ERIC) in March 2011.

19. Conclusions: Global and societal challenges (1)
Negotiate and Except focus on youth insecurity in the transitions to stable jobs and to adulthood.
Enliven – points to the needs and shortcomings in EU countries in LLL
Next aim is to become a coordinator in a European consortium
SHARE investigates health and active aging.

20. Conclusions: Global and societal challenges (2)
The topics of the three Horizon 2020 Projects and SHARE as an ERIC Research Infrastructure in social sciences should be prolonged in the next research phases in Europe, within the 9FP, as they refer to two important challenges facing contemporary societies: social inequalities and knowledge acquisition/transfer.

21. Bulgarian Research as Part of the European and Global knowledge
Benefits from participation in EU projects:
Two-way knowledge and experience transfer
Networking
Better opportunities for publications in journals with impact factor for social scientists
Inclusion of PhD students provides them with opportunity to develop their dissertations in an international academic environment and to be better paid.

22. Open Science, Big Data, Digital challenges
There is still no Social Data Archive existing in Bulgaria.
Hence, the inclusion in CESSDA network is the next project, which should be included in the National map of research infrastructures, together with ESS and SHARE
Open access to publications – a necessity for us, but paying fees for it is a real problem. There is a need for support for national journals in social sciences, receiving impact factor.

23. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION!
Prof. Rumiana Stoilova
Director of the
Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge, BAS, Bulgaria