Five research projects with the involvement of the UAB, one of them coordinated by the University, have obtained funding from the European Union’s Horizon Europe Cluster 2 Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society call.
Within the framework of the Institute of Government and Public Policies, the INTEGRED projects led by Antoni Verger and WELFAIR with Margarita León as principal researcher will be developed..
INTEGRED
Antoni Verger, lecturer in the Department of Sociology, will coordinate the project INTEGRED (An Integrative Approach to the Production, Use and Governance of Evidence in European Education), within the framework of the Institute of Government and Public Policy (IGOP-UAB). INTEGRED aims to transform how evidence is produced, used, and governed in European education systems by co-developing and institutionalising an Integrative Evaluation Framework (IEF). The project responds to the need for robust and context-sensitive evaluations while also strengthening the capacity to identify middle-range theories that enable findings to be generalised beyond specific contexts. Current evaluation approaches are fragmented. Counterfactual methods offer rigour but limited generalisability, while theory-based approaches provide contextual insights but face challenges with causal attribution. INTEGRED bridges this divide by combining multiple causal logics within a pluralist framework adaptable to diverse governance settings.
The IEF will be piloted in six countries, each centred on preventive measures such as delayed tracking, tutoring, and inclusive teaching. Co-created with policymakers and practitioners, these pilots will test and refine the framework’s methodological innovations while embedding evaluation into policy cycles. In parallel, the project will contribute to diagnosing and strengthening institutional capacity for policy evaluation and evidence uptake, developing a European blueprint for the good governance of evidence.
Led by an interdisciplinary consortium, INTEGRED will include the involvement of UAB lecturers Adrián Zancajo, Clara Fontdevila and Tomás Esper. It will generate impact across three domains. In science, by advancing an evaluation approach that brings together different logics of causation and combines rigour with contextual relevance. In policy, by enhancing evaluation capacity and fostering sustainable evidence cultures. In society, by informing preventive policies that promote equity, inclusion, and system resilience.
WELFAIR
Within the same call for proposals, the WELFAIR project (Intergenerational Fairness and the Welfare State in the Age of Inequality, Demographic Transformation, and Technological Change), coordinated by Anton Hemerajck and Fabian Mushovel, both from the European University Institute (EUI), has also secured funding. Margarita León is the Principal Investigator for one of the Work Packages and a member of the team from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. The project addresses the urgent challenge of intergenerational equity in a Europe marked by inequality, technological disruption, and demographic change.
