CIPSH-UNESCO Meeting

At the World Humanities Conference (WHC) in Liège 2017, the great potential of the humanities to provide insights and knowledge to address current global challenges was emphasized several times. To make better use of this potential in the future and to draw attention to the irreplaceability of humanities contributions to shaping global change, a New Humanities Agenda for the 21st Century was adopted at the conference. This agenda included the establishment of several UNESCO Chairs in the Humanities in collaboration with the International Council for Philosophy and Human Sciences (CIPSH). Representatives of CIPSH, UNESCO, and the UNESCO Chairs met in Mação/Portugal on March 7 and 8, 2019 to translate the conference´s goals strategically into a UNESCO action program.

Under the motto "Assessing Societal Priorities Addressed by the Humanities", the first workshop discussed future priority projects of CIPSH and UNESCO and identified gaps in current funding and research programs. Led by Prof. Luiz Oosterbeek (Secretary General of CIPSH), Dr. John Crowley (Chief of Section for Research, Policy, and Foresight in UNESCO's Division of Social Sciences and Humanities), and Prof. Chao Gejn (President of CIPSH), researchers from fields as diverse as philosophy, literary studies, archaeology, communication studies, education, anthropology, historical studies, and geography participated in the roundtable. In addition, Elizabeth Silva (Portuguese Commission for UNESCO), Prof. Alvaro Maglia (Secretary General of Grupo Montevideo), and Prof. António Nóvoa (Ambassador of Portugal to UNESCO) contributed their expertise. As a result of the session, a preliminary draft of a new UNESCO Framework Program based on the agenda adopted in Liège was developed and discussed.

In the second roundtable on the afternoon (8 March), the research programs of the newly established UNESCO Chairs from Latin America, Asia, North America, and Europe in cooperation with CIPSH were presented and possibilities for stronger cooperation between the Chairs were discussed. Prof. Benno Werlen presented the initiative for a "2020s Science Decade for Global Understanding", one of the key projects of the UNESCO Chair Jena. In addition, he outlined the idea of a UNESCO resolution on global sustainability. Both projects were intensively discussed and broad institutional support was pledged.

In addition to the two roundtable sessions, the UNESCO Chair on Humanities and Cultural Integrated Landscape Management (Prof. Oosterbeek) was inaugurated in Mação. The participants of the workshop were invited together with numerous guests from politics and science to the inauguration ceremony of the chair, located at the Instituto Politécnico de Tomar (Portugal), on the morning of March 8.