Partners
The University of Palermo, founded in 1806, is an internationally recognized public research institution, with over 40,500 students, 1,500 faculty members, and 16,000 administrative staff. It offers an interdisciplinary academic environment across 16 Departments, a School of Medicine, 21 libraries, a Museum System, a Language Centre, and a Guidance Centre. Its 2023–2024 educational offer includes 146 degree programmes, 40 Master’s courses, 34 Specialization Schools, and 31 PhD programmes.
The University holds the HR Excellence in Research logo awarded by the European Commission. The FAMA project will be led through the Department of Psychology, Educational Sciences and Human Movement (SPPEFF), which brings together around 100 academic staff. SPPEFF fosters interdisciplinary teaching and research across key fields such as education, psychology, sociology, and human movement sciences—highly relevant to strengthening democratic resilience, critical thinking, and media literacy. Key focus areas include: Teacher Training for pre-service and in-service educators, Pedagogy and Critical Thinking Development, Health and Well-being Literacy through Human Movement Sciences, Psychology and Community Resilience, Sociology, Gender Studies, Media Literacy, and Digital Skills.
The Department educates over 2,500 students annually in Education degrees and collaborates closely with schools, local authorities, NGOs, and professional organizations. Through its strong academic and societal outreach, SPPEFF is ideally positioned to support FAMA’s objectives in countering disinformation, promoting civic participation, and empowering European citizens.
The Centro per lo Sviluppo Creativo Danilo Dolci (CSC) is a renowned non-profit association based in Palermo, Italy,with over 20 years of experience at local and European levels in education, social innovation, and civic engagement.
Inspired by the legacy of sociologist and educator Danilo Dolci, CSC promotes nonviolent community development, participatory democracy, critical thinking, and media literacy through innovative, bottom-up methodologies such as the Reciprocal Maieutic Approach (RMA). CSC specializes in empowering teachers, youth workers, and young people by fostering media and digital literacy, critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and resilience against disinformation and extremism.
Its expertise is particularly aligned with the FAMA project objectives, given its leadership in Media and Information Literacy (MIL) initiatives such as the Erasmus+ Forward Looking project MILES and the CERV project CheckMate, focusing on tackling disinformation and promoting democratic engagement.
With a permanent staff of 15 professionals, a network of over 40 external experts, and strong ties to 25+ schools, universities, and 300+ partners in 50 countries, CSC brings substantial outreach capacity and proven experience in coordinating complex European projects.
Its extensive work in designing training materials, gamified educational platforms, online campaigns, and community mobilization efforts will directly contribute to the success of FAMA.
The National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA), founded in 1837, is the oldest university in Greece and one of the largest and most prestigious higher education institutions in Europe, with over 75,000 students and 2,000 academic staff.
It offers a broad range of academic programmes across over 40 Departments, including more than 200 master’s programmes.
The FAMA project will be implemented by the Department of Political Science and Public Administration. The Department offers a unique transdisciplinary academic environment.
Teaching and research activities are organised around four sub-disciplinary fields: Political Analysis, Social Theory and Sociology, Administrative Science and Public Law, and International and European Studies.
Its research units, such as the Lab of Political Communication and Information Media and the Institute for European Integration and Policy, are closely aligned with FAMA’s objectives: countering disinformation, strengthening democratic resilience, and promoting critical media literacy.
Athens Lifelong Learning Institute is a research and education institute, based in Athens Greece.
It has the mission to foster and enhance innovation processes mainly in the areas of education and lifelong learning, human capital development, knowledge society and social inclusion.
Through its activities it contributes to the education ecosystem through R&D activities, creating open education programmes, collaborating and promoting collaboration with advanced scientific organisations and organising educational events.
The Athens Lifelong Learning Institute is a leader in Greece in the fields of media literacy. Its activities in the field involve primarily (i). the development of a large pool of media literate professionals who work with youth in schools, youth centres and in non-formal contexts like libraries and museums, the so-called MediaCoaches.
(ii). The undertaking of large-scale media literacy education activities for parents of children and young people, with a particular emphasis on those more vulnerable to social/digital exclusion and (iii). the undertaking of a series of responses to the rising incidents of online hate speech and hate crime which are occurring across Europe, and which are gaining momentum.
Iscte – University Institute of Lisbon, is one of Portugal’s leading public universities, founded in 1972, with a strong commitment to high-quality teaching, interdisciplinary research, and community engagement.
Based in Lisbon, Iscte currently hosts more than 14,000 students—48% in undergraduate and 52% in postgraduate programmes—and employs approximately 450 academic staff and 240 administrative personnel. The university comprises four main schools: Business, Sociology and Public Policy, Technology and Architecture, and Social Sciences, and has a long-standing reputation for innovation in both academic and applied research.
Its multidisciplinary ethos is reinforced by eight research units and several laboratories. Central to this project is the Centre for Research and Studies in Sociology (CIES-iscte), established in 1985, which contributes internationally recognised research in fields such as political science, communication sciences, public policy, and sociology.
CIES-iscte focuses on themes such as communication and media, digital democracy, information and technology, and political participation—aligning closely with the FAMA project’s objectives. It studies contemporary social problems from a multidisciplinary perspective. Its main scientific field is sociology, but with highly relevant activity in public policy, political science, communication, education, modern and contemporary history and social work.
APX is a non-profit cooperative acting as social innovation hub aiming to enhance people, communities and organisations’ human and social capital as a strategy to strengthen their capacity to deal with existing and emerging challenges and opportunities.
The mission is accomplished daily by co-designing and developing tailor-made social innovation, good practices exchange, and transference driven projects. Aproximar develops, implements, and provides services across four main sectors: Education and Community Empowerment, Economy, Employability and Entrepreneurship, Criminal Justice System, and Active Ageing and Dependent Care.
Its approach combines social science expertise, participatory active methodologies, and appropriate technological tools. APX counts 8 trustees (non-paid members); 32 staff members and more >50 volunteers, on a daily basis, covering different expertise in human sciences, design and multimedia, communication, accountancy, social innovation, mentoring and IT.
APX team provides services that benefit/impact on a daily basis persons: professionals/practitioners, trainees, volunteers and persons with disadvantaged backgrounds, and (trans)national partner organisations: public and private: non-profit and for profit. Last year (2022) APX has managed to achieve a great penetration in its local community having provided support and services to more than 3.259 persons and 566 organisations and social enterprises.