August 10, 2026 | Categoría:
Two projects led by CECTS researchers and students were among those selected in the latest funding call run by the UAH Vice-Rectorate for Research and Innovation. The initiatives will contribute to the development of training activities and to strengthening transdisciplinary research.
In the Academic Activities category, the selected proposal was the National Meeting of Postgraduate Thesis Students in Science, Technology and Society (STS): Transdisciplinarity, futures and contemporary sociotechnical challenges, the first of its kind. The application was submitted by Mitzi Duboy Luengo, faculty member of the Department of Social Work, with a team of researchers and students associated with CECTS:
- Cristóbal Bonelli Iglesias, faculty member, Department of Sociology, FACSO
- Francisco Salinas Lemus, faculty member, Department of Sociology, FACSO
- Ambar Ángel Toledo, student, STS Master’s Programme, FACSO
- Daniela Silva, student, Sociology, FACSO
- Felipe Trañolao Neculqueo, student, Social Work, FACSO
The Meeting, to be held in October 2026, is conceived as an intensive space for academic exchange combining cross-reading workshops with short presentations of thesis progress in sessions of collective discussion and interdisciplinary feedback. These will be geared not only towards disseminating results but also towards strengthening research processes already under way.
In addition, as set out in the project’s official documentation, a “best STS thesis” prize will be awarded through the video competition Present your thesis in 3 minutes, promoting creative communication of research and its public outreach.
In the Research Competition for Academic Staff, the proposal titled Epistemological integration in transdisciplinary research: evaluating an intelligent agent as a facilitator of knowledge co-creation, was awarded funding.
The project will be carried out by an academic team that strengthens collaboration across different UAH faculties and departments. It will be led by Amaranta Alfaro (Department of Journalism) and Cristian Olivares Rodríguez (Faculty of Engineering), with Renato Moretti Tapia (Faculty of Psychology) as co-investigator.
Using an experimental design that combines quantitative and qualitative approaches, the research sets out to analyse how the mediation of an intelligent agent reconfigures the sociotechnical conditions of transdisciplinary co-creation — in terms of participatory symmetry, epistemological integration and the handling of disagreement — within heterogeneous working groups mediated by WhatsApp, incorporating a gender perspective that makes it possible to identify inequalities, differentiated risks and dynamics of power and/or violence.
As a measure of public impact, once the research is complete and drawing on its findings, the team plans to design a larger project that scales the AI-assisted co-creation methodology up to public policy or science governance settings.
Both funded projects will help strengthen collaboration across UAH units and consolidate national and international networks, while also serving as training spaces and as settings for research of quality and impact.