The overall objective of the LIFE-IP LatViaNature is to ensure implementation of the PAF specifically addressing gaps and shortcomings and ensuring favorable conservation status of the natural and semi-natural habitats and species of Community interest by developing best practices, and creating and adopting innovative solutions.

Higher education institution (HEIs) are crucial drivers of knowledge ecosystems, and increasingly also of innovation ecosystems possessing the potential to impact through education, research and regional development. Through Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe funding, the European Commission has been active in supporting HEIs to increase the engagement and impact in the context of their region, by fostering innovation and entrepreneurship activities. The new European Research Area is expected to strengthen the Research and Innovation dimension of HEIs through a comprehensive institutional Higher Education Transformation Agenda in synergy with the European Education Area, reinforcing their role as drivers of change, fostering their recovery, enabling shared objectives between the EU and Member States’ initiatives to support higher education institutions in their efforts to transform on their education, research, innovation and service to society missions. Given that that impact is achieved through active engagement of the knowledge and digitally-driven HEI with its environment, understanding the context in which the HEI exists and aims to impact is vitally important. Initiatives such as the EC’s Smart Specialisation recognise the symbiosis between the HEI and its region, whilst the existence of ecosystems in both university-business cooperation and entrepreneurship are recognised. To engender transformation within HEIs to create better impact pathways, is an exercise in change management and processes. To drive change then, a comprehensive series of sequential and parallel activities need to occur that raise Awareness, Desire, Knowledge that lead to Action, which then needs to be measured to enable the new behaviour to be Reinforced. This can be achieved through a focussed support system that builds on the status quo, develops a vision and activities described in a roadmap and then executed in application projects supported with coaching, training and international exchange.

Ent-r-e-novators: entrepreneurs-researchers-educators-innovators - an ambition where we drop the either-or-thinking pattern and advocate a strong interconnection between education, research, innovation and entrepreneurship. E3UDRES2 Ent-r-e-novators address the region’s needs in a variety of approaches: futuring workshops, hackathons, I living labs or citizen science research projects. Ent-r-e-novators bridge the know-do gap and move from a me to a we-culture.

The Aim of this interdisciplinary research project is to study scientific culture at secondary schools in Latvia as one of the most crucial driving forces for science literate society, generate knowledge basis for scholarly discourse and policy recommendations, and to develop and test a model of theoretically and empirically grounded criteria for evaluating scientific school culture in the post pandemic future.

Recreation in the outdoors provides large benefits to individuals and societies, but with increased participation also follows challenges with sustainable management of nature areas. Nature-based recreation has transformed in several ways; besides the increase in volume of visitors, the behaviour of visitors has diversified; visitors partake in a wider set of activities, visit more remote places, take more diversified trips in nature, have different motivations for visitation as well as levels of experience and skills.

The aim of this interdisciplinary research project is to carry out an assessment of circularity opportunities in tourism sector organisations and identify a conceptual assessment of the resources and processes for implementing the Green Deal (GD) conditions, to develop proposals based on the results of the study for introducing circularity and implementing the requirements of the Green Deal at the level of tourism sector and tourism companies in order to promote the competitiveness of the sector in export markets.

The aim of the project is to explore the impact of education as a value for the growth of Latvian society in the socio-economic and cultural context, assessing the social return of the population to economic development and achieving a higher quality of life, ensuring a contribution to the productivity of humanitarian capital in the Latvian regional context.

Goal of the project: Increase international mobility of students and staff as well as international cooperation with partner countries

Goal of the project: Increase international mobility of students and staff as well as international cooperation within programme countries

Vision:
E³UDRES², the Engaged and Entrepreneurial European University as Driver for European Smart and Sustainable Regions, promotes the development of small and medium-sized cities and their rural areas into smart and sustainable regions and shapes a prosperous future with the best possible quality of life for a self-determined people in a progressive European society.
E³UDRES² promotes outstanding ideas and concepts for future universities, integrates challenge-based learning, mission-oriented research, human-centered innovation as well as open and engaged knowledge exchange as interrelated core areas with and establishes an exemplary multi-university campus across Europe.