An European strategic partnership has been established, “APHELEIA”, endorsed by CIPSH, coordinated by the Polytechnic Institute of Tomar and involving universities, local authorities, NGOs, private companies and research centers from eight European countries. In the 2015 edition (March), the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences participated in the program. Also, African and Latin American universities join the program in 2016.
This partnership aims at structuring a convergent set of tools that will foster the need for a properly Integrated (as opposed to dispersed) Cultural (i.e. human and diverse) Landscape Management (rooted in human understandings and leading towards governance through awareness and critical thinking) for Local and Global Sustainability (addressing the great global dilemmas, but also focused on individual anxieties and needs).
Such a program implies a high degree of complexity to be dealt with by the academia, but also requires efficient operative tools, that may render such complexity simple for non-academics and for daily lives. Apheleia , the spirit of simplicity in ancient Greece, stands as the leading and inspiring word for the current partnership, since rendering simple the complexity of things is an academic obligation and an urgent need to foster tangible down-the-line convergent actions.
Similar projects are also to be established in other continents, and this will likely happen in the near future in Southern America. In this sense, Apheleia converges with the scope of the World Conference of the Humanities and with the global vision that currently brings together the efforts of UNESCO and CIPSH, as we have had the occasion to discuss before. It also meets the agenda of IYGU.
In 2016, the program runs in March, from the 9th till the 18th, and will be preceded by three journeys (6th to 8th) of academic events in collaboration with Brazilian partners (universities, research centres and the lawyers bar).
More information at www.apheleiaproject.org