On Saturday, 28th, February and taking advantadge of the presence  of several researchers from the Glamurs Consortium in Corunna, we visit one of the initiatives the UDC team will study as a responsible consumption organisation. The  aims of the NGO, Equus Zebra, www.equuszebra.es/es/, are the integration of immigrant communities in Corunna, but also is focused in sustainable clothing and sustainable consumption. Victor Omgba, his president, explained us about its functioning, activities and the daily routines of the NGO, which has its headquarters in neighbourhood of Agra.

On February, the 25th, an international Seminar organised by the People Environment Research Group on “Back-casting scenario development” took place at the University of Corunna, Spain.

This kind of workshop is one of the main tools by which the group of researchers from the UDC manages and provides specialized training to the rest of the members of the Consortium for the Glamurs Project. In this case the training was on a methodology to create participation scenarios with the case studies included within the project and which whom the researches have been working since January 2014, date when the project started.

Apart from the members of the manager team, this international workshop gathered together other members of the Glamurs Consortium from Scotland, Austria., Germany, Italy, Portugal and the Netherlands. Other members from Leipzig (Helmholtz Institute) and Magdeburg (University of Magdeburg) also joined the meeting through video-conference.

The coordinator of the GLAMURS project, Professor Ricardo García Mira, will travel on Monday to Rome in order to participate as a guest speaker at the international seminar MILESECURE-2050 on how European societies face the energy transition from 2020. Professor García Mira will focus his speech on the factors of change in lifestyles and the associated psychosocial and socioeconomical dimensions addressed by the GLAMURS project (www.glamurs.eu).

MILESECURE-2050 aims a higher understanding of the social, economical and political factors facilitating or constraining the reduction of consumption of fosile fuel, the diversification of energy balance at rates which guarantee the European energy security in the horizon of 2050, and the reduction of the threat of the climate change.

The project is coordinated by the Politecnic of Turin (Italy) under the auspices of the European Commission and the Italian Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, and it will take place in Rome from 17 to 18 February.
More information at: http://www.milesecure2050.eu/events/en/2014/12/04/readabout/rome-international-conference

From a strongly inter-disciplinary perspective, four European research consortia met last 21st of November at the Erasmus University in Rotterdam to discuss the role of civil society in sustainability transitions. Representatives of the projects ARTS, TESS, GLAMURS and TRANSIT participated in a “pressure cooker”, an intensive one-day series of presentations, critical reflections and small-group discussions in which they reflected on the best ways to create synergies in European research, as well as on the best ways to understand and study sustainable initiatives and their role in Europe.

For further information, go to: www.drift.eur.nl/?p=9091
For downloading the proceedings/report, click here: www.people-environment-udc.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Proceedings_Pressure_Cooker_Workshop.pdf

From 24th to 29th June 2012 the 22nd IAPS Conference was held in Glasgow, UK. Four
members of our research group attended this conference, participating in 3 symposia, two of
them promoted by our group.