Since 2007, the Centre for Intercultural Studies (CEI) of ISCAP, at the Polytechnic University of Porto (P.PORTO), has developed applied and fundamental research, co-operating with other national and international institutions in scientific, technical, educational and cultural projects.
CEI’s designation and goals comprehend the whole interdisciplinary field generated by the research, teaching, exchanges, scientific events, and editorial projects the team has created along the years within CEI’s three main research lines: intercultural theories and practices, intercultural communication, and intercultural business.
The CEI team is composed of over 50 senior and junior researchers from P.PORTO and other national and international institutions, and has the support of a renowned Advisory Board. CEI hosts an R&D hub of the Centre for Languages, Literatures and Cultures (CLLC) of the University of Aveiro and supervises masterclasses, conferences, seminars, 3 Post-Graduate Courses (Cultural Development STEAM, Intercultural Mediation, and Science, Entrepreneurship and Innovation) and 2 MA programs – in Intercultural Studies for Business (DD with Université d’Artois, ISIT-Paris, and El Jadida University) and in Specialized Translation and Interpreting (European Master’s in Translation) – with the support of a specialized library and several open access databases. CEI is awaiting approval for its PhD in Intercultural Studies for Innovation.
From the onset, CEI has taken part in countless international conferences and publications, funded research projects, and published more than two dozen books for worldwide distribution, in the vast field of intercultural studies. Every year, CEI grants awards to MA dissertations, offers scholarships and internships for junior researchers, and publishes the E-REI: E–Journal of Intercultural Studies (SCOPUS).
CEI collaborates formally with universities all over the world, as well as with national and international institutions and networks, and provides services of Cultural Development through the Porto Executive Academy. CEI belongs to the ATHENA European University alliance, RESMI (Higher Education Network for Intercultural Mediation), RIESDM (Network of Higher Education Institutions for the Protection of the Mediterranean Diet), the World Network of Magellan Universities, Partner Network of the Safer Internet Centre, and the Community of Practice (CoP) on Science and Art in Education of the European Commission. CEI is a founding member of ECREA Women’s Network, of REEC – European Network for Cultural Studies and of the Global Cultural Studies Network (Birmingham University). CEI is an active member of 4 COST actions (Writing Urban Places, SHiFT, SlowMemo and Margistar) and of the projects ICCAGe (ReCLes), EnDent, Atlas of Portuguese Literary Landscapes, Google Arts&Culture, BIP Research Skills Booster, Augmented Assessment, ENDING, SciArt, TheRoute, and StreetArtCEI, among others. CEI maintains specific PhD protocols with the Universities of Vigo, Santiago de Compostela and Salamanca.
At CEI, intercultural studies are synonymous with movement, communication, dynamics, and encounters between cultures. Our purpose is to study their pragmatic consequences in academia and society. The contemporary intercultural travel is a global journey, a circumnavigation powered by the speed of new technologies. This is why we propose to examine the motivations, characteristics, consequences and representations of cultural interactions in their perpetual movement, devoid of spatial and temporal borders, in a risky but stimulating indefinition of limits.