Water p-Roof

PIs: Carla Lancelotti, Francesca D'Agostini

The project aims at converting part of the roof of Mercé Rodoreda building in an experimental station for growing crops


 

STOP: Suicide PrevenTion in sOcial Platforms

  • Awarded person: Ana Freire
  • Department: Information and Communications Technologies
  • Type of action: Postdoctoral researcher

The aim of STOP is to offer emotional support to people with mental health issues in social media. For this purpose, we use artificial intelligence and data analytics to characterise users in risk of suicide ideation, depression and eating disorders. Once we automatically extract the demographic and behavioural patterns associated with these issues, we launch social media campaigns addressed to people who match those profiles. All the process is done keeping the privacy of the users (the project passed the CIREP ethical review). With the funding provided, we could perform the following actions: 1) We covered the publication fees of three journal articles (Q1), 2) We covered the costs associated with social media campaigns to offer emotional support to people at risk, 3) We covered the costs associated with social media campaigns to collect participants to perform a study about mental health in the workplace. Find more information about the project here.

Related publications:

  • Solans Noguero, D., Ramírez-Cifuentes, D., Ríssola, E. A., & Freire, A. (2023). Gender Bias When Using Artificial Intelligence to Assess Anorexia Nervosa on Social Media: Data-Driven Study. Journal of Medical Internet Research, 25, e45184.

  • Ramírez-Cifuentes, D., Freire, A., Baeza-Yates, R., Sanz Lamora, N., Álvarez, A., González-Rodríguez, A., ... & Gonzàlez, J. (2021). Characterization of anorexia nervosa on social media: textual, visual, relational, behavioral, and demographical analysis. Journal of medical Internet research, 23(7), e25925.

  • Ramírez-Cifuentes, D., Largeron, C., Tissier, J., Baeza-Yates, R., & Freire, A. (2021). Enhanced word embedding variations for the detection of substance abuse and mental health issues on social media writings. IEEE Access, 9, 130449-130471.


 

For Whose Benefit?: A Critical Analysis of Forest Carbon Offsetting Projects and Conflict

  • Awarded person: Dominique Schmid
  • Department: Political and Social Sciences
  • Type of action: PhD student

The PhD project of Dominique Schmid titled “For Whose Benefit?: A Critical Analysis of Forest Carbon Offsetting Projects and Conflict” was funded by the Planetary Wellbeing Initiative in 2019. Initially, the budget was planned to be spent on fieldwork to conduct an in-depth case study about the relationship of two forest carbon offsetting projects in Uganda and social conflict. This was planned as a follow-up study of a broader statistical analysis on this subject conducted by the grant recipient (see publication below). The fieldwork would have been conducted in collaboration with Makerere University, Kampala, Uganda – Geoscience Department. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its uncertainties for travelling, the thesis objective had to be adjusted. As a result of this, the funding was used for training of the doctoral researcher.

Related publications:

  • Dominique V. Schmid (2023) Are forest carbon projects in Africa green but mean?: A mixed-method analysis, Climate and Development, 15:1, 45-59, DOI: 10.1080/17565529.2022.2054400


 

The Role of Higher Education in Refugee Integration

PhD student: Begüm Dereli

Department: Political and Social Sciences

This activity covered the fieldwork to conduct the research, including interviews, and participant observation during the fall of 2019 in Gaziantep, a Turkish city on the Syrian border that hosts almost half a million Syrian refugees. This research on the young refugees’ experiences through higher education aims to tackle a new perspective on their integration process by providing insights into the refugee youths’ diverse experiences and contributing to a deeper understanding of the role of higher education in refugees’ integration by focusing on urban refugees’ experiences. Find the thesis here.

 


 

The role of blue spaces on health and wellbeing

PhD student: Cristina Vert Roca

Cristina applied for this grant while doing her PhD at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) to attend the 16th International Conference on Urban Health (ICUH 2019). It took place in Xiamen (China). The main theme of the conference, organized by the International Society of Urban Health, was “People Oriented Urbanisation: Transforming Cities for Health and Well-Being”, which was in line with the area of work of my thesis. Cristina presented two studies from her thesis: (i) Individual-level intervention assessing short-term effects of blue spaces: The Walking Office Workers (WOW) study; and (ii) Impact of a riverside accessibility intervention on use, physical activity, and wellbeing: A mixed methods pre/post-evaluation.


 

Low Carbon Health Systems

PI: Joan Benach

This is interdisciplinary project analyzes what a healthcare system would be like in scenarios with lower emissions, what the climate impact of the healthcare system is, and proposes solutions to achieve sustainable, equitable and efficient healthcare systems

Benach et al. J Epidemiol Community Health 2022; Benach et al. Soc Sci and Medicine 2022


 

Communication strategies for sustainability: the potential of human rights and equality-based narratives for urgent climate action

PI: Ana García Juanatey

The focus of this project was twofold: on the one hand, to provide a meta-review of the relevant literature in the field of climate change communication and translate it into easy-to-read advocacy recommendations; and, on the other hand, to explore the connection between the agendas of human rights and climate movements and propose human rights-based narratives capable of stimulating urgent climate action.


 

Youth Engagement for Climate Action - YOUGECA

  • Awarded person: Mariona Ferrer-Fons
  • Department: Political and Social ScienceS
  • Type of action: Pilot projects

YouGECA project analyses the causes and implications of youth engagement during the last wave of climate mobilizations and the generational environmental awareness. The project explores the impact of the 2018-2020 climate mobilizations in the young people’s political involvement local and globally, the role of social networks and in the narratives of climate change. The outbreak of the COVID pandemic has represented an opportunity to understand the effect of the global health and social crisis on the movement and its causes for the climate.

Related publications:

  • Soler-i-Martí, R., Fernández-Planells, A. & Pérez-Altable, L. (2022) Bringing the future into the present: The notion of emergency in youth climate movement. Social Movement Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/14742837.2022.2123312   
  • Soler-i-Martí, R, Ferrer-Fons, M., Terren, L., Fernández-Planells, A. & Pérez Altable, L. (2022). #4F. Hashtags For Future: El moviment juvenil pel clima a les xarxes socials. Direcció General de Joventut.
  • Diaz, S., Soler-i-Martí, R. & Ferrer-Fons, M. (2021) From global myth to local mobilization. Creation and resonance of Greta’s frame. Comunicar. Media Education Research Journal, 68, 35-45. https://doi.org/10.3916/C68-2021-03   
  • Terren, L. & Soler-i-Martí (2021) ‘Glocal’ and Transversal Engagement in Youth Social Movements: A Twitter-based Case Study of Fridays For Future-Barcelona. Frontiers in Political Science. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpos.2021.635822 
  • Soler-i-Martí, R., Ballesté, E. & Feixa, C. (2020) Desde la periferia: la noción de espacio social en la movilización sociopolítica de la juventud. Revista Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales, Niñez y Juventud, 19(1), 1-26. https://dx.doi.org/10.11600/rlcsnj.19.1.4554  
  • Soler-i-Martí, R., Ferrer-Fons, M. & Terren, L. (2020) The interdependency of online and offline activism: A case study of Fridays For Future-Barcelona in the context of the COVID-19 lockdown. Hipertext.net, 21, 105-14. https://doi.org/10.31009/hipertext.net.2020.i21.09  

 


 

Climate Justice and Planetary Wellbeing

  • Awarded persons: Santiago Zabala and Antonino Firenze
  • Department: Humanities
  • Type of action: Workshops & conferences

 On 2 May 2020, the internationally renowned environmental and cultural thinker and activist Adrian Parr visited the Institute of Culture (IUC) at UPF to give the lecture “Climate Justice and Planetary Wellbeing”, invited by Santiago Zabala, ICREA-UPF research professor of the Department of Humanities. The activity is part of the strategic UPF project in relation to Planetary Wellbeing. The President Jaume Casals was also present as he supported this invitation. More information about the conference here. The talk by Parr is now included in her latest book from Columbia University Press.