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The EU can be thought of as the current biggest laboratory of intercultural collaboration. Both the process of enlargement and the immigration flows increase its degree of diversity.
ENGIME aims to provide an interdisciplinary forum that studies the relationships between economic growth/innovation and cultural diversity.

The EU can be thought of as the current biggest laboratory of intercultural collaboration. Both the process of enlargement and the immigration flows increase its degree of diversity.
ENGIME aims to provide an interdisciplinary forum that studies the relationships between economic growth/innovation and cultural diversity. The starting point is that to understand the costs and benefits of European diversity one can look at Europe as a potential reproduction on a world scale of some of the characteristics that urban centres have on a national and regional scale.
Using cities as laboratories of diversity, a series of multidisciplinary workshops is held to assess the costs and benefits associated with cultural diversity and to:

  • Encourage cross-disciplinary dialogue;
  • Mobilise ongoing research on economic growth, innovation and cultural diversity in cities, so as to provide the policy process at European, national, regional and local level with the latest findings;
  • Identify research vacuums and design research priorities for the future;
  • Provide a deeper understanding of the relationships between urban life, cultural diversity and economic growth and innovation.

ENGIME has organised six interdisciplinary workshops:

  • Workshop.1: Mapping Diversity. Understanding the Dynamics of Multicultural Cities
  • Workshop.2: Communication across Cultures in Multicultural Cities
  • Workshop.3: Social dynamics and Conflicts in Multicultural Cities
  • Workshop.4: Governance and Policies in Multicultural Cities
  • Workshop.5: Trust and Social Capital in Multicultural Cities
  • Workshop.6: Multicultural Cities: Diversity, Growth and Sustainable Development

The project helped building an interdisciplinary network cross-benefiting all disciplines. It also provided a deeper understanding of the relationships between economic growth, urban life and cultural values, contributing in particular to the Europeanization of socio-economic research.
The relationships established and the research conducted in ENGIME launched the Network of Excellence on “Sustainable Development in a Diverse World” (SUS.DIV) and the Marie Curie Series of Conferences on “Cultural Diversity in Europe” (EURODIV).