About

Advancing the knowledge and understanding the transformations of contemporary society in a context of climate change and digital transition.

MISSION

DINÂMIA’CET-Iscte, Centre for the Study of Socioeconomic Change and the Territory is an Iscte Research Unit, evaluated with Excellent by FCT - the Portuguese national funding agency for science, research and technology. The Centre combines fundamental and applied research on economic, social and cultural topics. It carries out advanced international research systematically grounded on interdisciplinarity. With the aim of framing a new approach to sustainable development, our research seeks to contribute to the understanding of the contemporary world through the analysis of the contexts, the actors and the consequences of change, with a focus on institutional frameworks, and through extensive recourse to comparative approaches. Devoting special attention to the dynamics and changes of the Portuguese society, the researchers of DINÂMIA’CET-Iscte are engaged in contributing to the design of the future, and, when considered appropriate (e.g. to promote environmental sustainability, social cohesion and democracy), do not hesitate to expressly endorse a normative approach.

ABOUT

Advancing the knowledge and understanding the transformations of contemporary society in a context of climate change and digital transition.

RESEARCH GROUPS

This Group aims to study Innovation and Labour and their interconnections, considering that the current growth regime is undermining the responsible use of resources and social cohesion. The main objective of the Innovation team is to further the understanding of how knowledge and innovation may reconcile wealth creation and the transition to a sustainable regime. Technological entrepreneurship, academic spin-offs, and the creation and dissemination of new technologies are also relevant for this team. The Labour team focuses on the recent trends of labour market, notably the rise of precariousness, unemployment, and wage and income inequality in post-industrial economies, which have renewed the interest of scholars and policy makers in labour market segmentation and polarization arguments. The research attempts to provide insights into social cohesion linked to the world of work.

Coordinator: Helena Lopes
This Group focuses its research on the territorial dimensions of contemporary socioeconomic, environmental and cultural change, analysing its complex restructuring mechanisms at the light of their spatiality, their territorial embeddedness and their spatial-morphological dimensions, and framing them in the scope of the promotion of multidimensional sustainable development processes.

The strategy for deepening the knowledge about the dynamics of change in spatial and territorial terms is based on the acknowledgment of the diversity of logics, processes and actors that produce and appropriate these processes. This is always done from a triple perspective, involving (i) the analysis of the "dynamics" themselves; (ii) the understanding of the regulation/planning issues and the aspects related to urban/territorial action and “policy-making"; and (iii), a "reflexive" consciousness of the ways these spaces are worked and studied.

Coordinator: Pedro Costa
This Group centers on modes of regulation and governance, encompassing the state and the rule of law, markets and collective action, against the background of Europeanization and globalization. It is assumed that new modes of public and private regulation are increasingly relevant, both formal, including soft law, and informal, based on cooperation, self-regulation and social action. Under scrutiny are inter alia environmental and public health risks, ICT, financial markets, social policies.

GEC also provides a framework for research on science communication and public engagement, and on the social responsibility of science and research institutions, all increasingly asked to participate in regulatory processes.

Relying upon inputs from economics, jurisprudence, sociology, architecture, and computer science, the Group’s thematic lines follow up from this backdrop, sustained by work developed under several projects.

Coordinator: Ana Costa