I-CIVIC: democracy, community and education

I-CIVIC studies how people learn to take part in decisions that affect their lives. It connects schools, communities and public institutions across countries.

Innovating Civic Engagement: Pedagogies for a Resilient Generation is a Horizon Europe Marie Skłodowska-Curie Staff Exchanges project running from 1 November 2025 to 31 October 2029. The University of the Basque Country coordinates the consortium, which includes the University of Cambridge. European Commission project record.

Steven’s contribution

Steven Watson’s Cambridge contribution focuses on training researchers and sharing knowledge. Cambridge leads Work Package 4—the part of the project responsible for research training and exchange across disciplines and settings. Planned activities include online and in-person learning. Project work packages and responsibilities.

Steven brings questions about learning and participation: what helps people speak up, be taken seriously and influence a decision? How can a group make room for disagreement and hear people whose experience is easily overlooked?

A collaboration across institutions and communities

The partnership connects universities with civic and cultural organisations, including ALDA, EUDEC, Vabamu and the Basque Government’s education department. This creates opportunities to study civic learning across classrooms, community activity and public decision-making. Partner overview.

The partners learn from people working in different settings. An approach that works in one school or community may need to change elsewhere; understanding those differences is part of the research.

The connection with autopoietic ecology

For Steven, the connection with AE is practical: what makes participation possible? People need opportunities to ask questions, challenge a view, be heard and see what happens to their contribution.

• Trust: what makes a source, relationship or institution worth relying on, and how can that reliance remain open to questioning?
• Understanding information: how do platforms, AI-generated material and educational practices shape what becomes understandable and credible?
• Participation: whose experience enters the discussion, whose remains difficult to express, and which contributions affect decisions?
• Putting things right: what can change when participation is formally offered but practically blocked?

These are questions Steven brings to the wider programme. They guide inquiry; they are not claims that I-CIVIC has already demonstrated a particular theoretical explanation.

Current developments — September 2026

The consortium is developing its empirical work. A University of Siena update published on 25 August describes Alessandra Romano’s July–August secondment in the Basque Country: survey analysis, community fieldwork and planning for subsequent case studies. These are reported consortium activities. Read the project update.

The next questions concern what these encounters make visible, how research tools work across settings, and how learning is shared with colleagues and communities. Outcomes will need to be assessed through the project’s published evidence.

Project and institutional status

I-CIVIC is a funded consortium project in which the University of Cambridge participates. EdgeLab is an independent research network where Steven explains connections across his work. His University responsibilities and the consortium’s institutional partnerships do not confer institutional recognition on EdgeLab.

I-CIVIC project page at CRASSH · Jyväskylä project page · Research Programme · Contact Steven