The Atlantic Social Lab partnership has organized the event "Social Innovation: Debates on a Research Agenda", at the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra (CES), seeking to clarify the discussion about this notion, both as a scientific concept, as a practice that promotes change, and as a view that influenced the recent European policy agenda.

This event, which took place last February 26th and brought together about 30 participants, included the presentation and initial comment by Hugo Pinto, coordinator at CES of the Atlantic Social Lab (ASL) project. The first moment of the event was dedicated to a Master class on “Models of Social Innovation and Public Policies” by Sílvia Ferreira, member of ASL team in CES and Professor at the Faculty of Economics - University of Coimbra. The second moment included a seminar on social innovation experiences. This seminar started with the presentation “A Research Path and an Observatory for Social Innovation in the Atlantic Area”, by Fábio Sampaio, project manager at CES and ASL project junior researcher (2017-2019), with the comment of Carla Nogueira, PhD researcher at CinTurs (Centre for Research in Tourism, Sustainability and Welfare - University of Algarve). Kemilly Mello, PhD student at the Federal University of São Carlos (Brazil), on a scientific visit to CES, presented “Experiences of Social Innovation in the European Union, Portugal and Brazil”, highlighting preliminary results of her research. The presentation was commented by André Guerreiro, current ASL project junior researcher.

The Atlantic Social Lab, led by the Municipality of Avilés (Spain), is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the INTERREG Atlantic Area Cooperation Program, under the reference EAPA_246 / 2016.