The standard framework for rational decision making is expected utility theory. In this framework, decision makers are modelled as having a probability function, which represents their degrees of belief about what is likely to happen, as well as a utility function that represents how desirable they find each possible outcome. Expected utility theory has been influential in many disciplines, including philosophy, but it has important limitations and flaws. In particular, desires are typically treated as subjective and hence not a suitable target of criticism, aside from the requirement that they obey very generic coherence constraints. Agents’ degrees of belief, on the other hand, are held to much more stringent standards. For example, most decision theorists maintain that degrees of belief should be mathematical probabilities and that agents should use a rule called “Bayesian updating” to adjust their degrees of belief in response to evidence. This project will argue that the asymmetric way in which belief and desire are treated in the standard theory is unjustified. Desires can be misaligned with the world, just like beliefs can be false. For example, suppose you live in Alaska and you detest snow and desire tropical weather. Then your desires are clearly misaligned with the world—it would be better for you if you either (somehow) grew to like snow or if you moved to the tropics. In the same way that it is rational to aim to believe the truth, it seems rational to aim to have desires that are aligned with the world. The main goal of the project is to develop a novel theory of rational desire management that takes seriously the idea that our desires can align to a greater or lesser extent with our circumstances and values. In so doing, the project will inaugurate a completely new subfield of philosophy devoted to the formal study of what makes desires rational.

Educating for Equitable Health Outcomes - the Promise of School Health and Physical Education (EDUHEALTH) is a collaborative research project that will build on an existing working relationship and create long-lasting networks between three universities in Sweden, Norway and New Zealand. The project’s primary goal is to make a meaningful contribution to the European Union (EU) strategy to promote physical activity and health for all citizens. The World Health Organisation (WHO) states that everybody has the right to attain ‘health’ and advocates ‘equal health’ for all citizens of all nations. As researchers of Physical Education Teacher Education (PETE) and Health and Physical Education (HPE) we recognise that HPE plays a crucial role in attaining this goal. However, the way HPE is taught and conceptualised does not always provide equitable health outcomes across gender, sexuality, ethnicity, religion and social class. The EDUHEALTH project aims to contribute to improved individual and societal health by examining the role that school HPE can play in contributing to equitable health outcomes for the people of the EU and beyond. Our common understanding and experiences of working with socially-critical perspectives in PETE draws us together and provides a shared belief that health equity goals could be more effectively reached when socially-critical perspectives are at the core of HPE pedagogy. EDUHEALTH aims to share knowledge and study HPE teachers practices from a ‘bottom-up’ perspective by observing in schools. More specifically, by drawing on a Critical Incident Technique (CIT) methodology we will identity effective/productive socially-critical HPE teaching practices. These practices will be used to develop intervention strategies that are intended to assist teachers in other HPE contexts to further refine and develop their practices to become more inclusive and engaging thus helping contribute to healthier citizens and societies.

The main goal of Co-VAL is to discover, analyse, and provide policy recommendations for transformative strategies that integrate the co-creation of value in public administrations. The project aims to accomplish these objectives by conducting research on the paradigm shift from the traditional top-down model to demand and bottom-up driven models when citizens, civil servants, private, and third sector organizations voluntarily participate in the development of transformative innovations addressing changing needs and social problems. Co-VAL will push the boundaries of both research and practice by providing: i) a comprehensive and holistic theoretical framework for understanding value co-creation in public services from a service-dominant logic and a service innovation multiagent framework, ii) measurement and monitoring for transformations in the public sector by using both existing data and new metrics (large-scale survey), iii) investigation on 4 public-service-related co-creation areas of public sector transformation: digital transformation (including open platforms, big data, and digital service delivery), service design (including service blue-printing), government living labs, and innovative structural relationships (public-private innovation networks and social innovation), and iv) generation of sustainable impacts in public administration policy and practice by delivering actionable policy recommendations that build on the research findings, by tracking and monitoring how governments’ pilot projects and actions, and by facilitating peer to peer knowledge exchange to facilitate implementation. Co-VAL is a consortium of 13 teams from 11 EU countries formed by leading experts in public administration, co-creation and open governance, digital economy and service innovation. The consortium is organised to co-work with stakeholders representing central, regional and local administrations.

ESIRA acknowledges that innovative social economy initiatives, focusing on local networks, competences, and resources, are able to recognise the important role of citizen-led activities to fulfil the needs of rural areas, especially marginalised ones. Nevertheless, many policies and initiatives fail to effectively support them and/or engage the more vulnerable groups of population. The main objective of ESIRA is to contribute to the rollout of place-based innovative social economy initiatives for rural inclusion and development in (marginalised) rural areas by supporting enabling frameworks, well-interconnected policy architecture and directly piloting innovative solutions which ultimately build more inclusive, resilient and prosperous rural areas. To achieve it, ESIRA will implement a work plan focused on (i) the research of community-led rural innovation spaces able to connect and empower actors, reinforce the social capital and sense of community, considering the great diversity of rural areas within Europe, and eventually (ii) nurturing and piloting social economy initiatives that strengthen the inclusiveness and living conditions of different groups of population in vulnerable situation, from the improvement in the provision of (social) services, economic diversification, and sustainable management of the natural capital. This will enable to (iii) stocktake and formulate recommendations for policymakers to better support the third sector and local communities, increasing the understanding of the needs and challenges of vulnerable groups of population and social economy, and (iv) boost the knowledge-exchange among local actors, building up their capacities and facilitating the scale up and replication of social economy initiatives across Rural Europe. 9 regions in 7 European countries will be involved in the project. The exploitation and dissemination activities will aim at expanding those regional spaces and replicating our concept in new regions.

The overall objective of LOCOMOTION is to enhance existing Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) in order to provide policy makers and relevant stakeholders with a reliable and practical model system to assess the feasibility, effectiveness, costs and impacts of different sustainability policy options, and to identify the most effective transition pathways towards a low-carbon society. Building on existing IAMs developed in the MEDEAS European project, and including knowledge from other relevant models (World6, TIMES, LEAP, GCAM, C-Roads, …), a number of substantive improvements are foreseen with respect to the state-of-the-art in energy-economy-environment modelling: • Expanding the geographical coverage and detail by creating a new worldwide multi-regional model with 7 global regions and integrating the 28 EU countries. • Improving IAMs by increasing the detail and precision of existing modules and adding new ones. • Integrating relevant functionalities from other models and comparing modelling results. • Integrating demand management policies in scenario assessment. • Representing and quantifying uncertainty. • Improving the usability of the IAMs through the development of two interface levels (professional and educational). • Exploiting and disseminating model result to three stakeholder groups: policy-makers and experts on strategic planning; experts on IAMs, modellers and programmers; and civil society. The improved IAM will be the product of an interdisciplinary work in data management, policy and scenario assessment and system dynamic modelling of relevant environmental, economic, social, technological and biophysical variables. This new IAM will be a robust, usable and reliable tool of diagnostic and scenario assessment for a sustainable transition towards a low-carbon society. LOCOMOTION will provide the different stakeholders with a more effective, user-friendly and open-source, model system for decision-support, education and social awareness.