To learn more about this initiative:
Our Story
The idea for this website emerged from the course ‘Global Policies and Local Challenges: Perspectives from the South’, taught by Dr Vera G. Centeno and offered by the Faculty of Education and Culture at Tampere University, financed and facilitated by UniPID Virtual Studies. The course aims to engage critically with global education agendas, local contexts and the knowledge produced in and from the Global South. It was conceived to foster dialogue, bring together diverse voices, encourage cross-regional reflections and support a deeper understanding of the global–local nexus. As the course expanded, it became clear that the lectures, debates, and guest contributions contained valuable insights that should reach wider audiences beyond the classroom.
Building on these goals, BRIDGED was jointly developed by Vera G. Centeno, Luiz Alonso de Andrade, and Ligia Ribeiro dos Anjos, who collaborated to design a space that is both informative and open to future growth. Through this collective effort, the website extends the course’s core purpose: it becomes a shared initiative to promote accessible, critical, and context-sensitive discussions about social policy, education, and development.
• Our Approach
Contemporary social challenges demand dialogue across geographical, disciplinary and institutional boundaries. BRIDGED arises from this need for interaction and co-production of knowledge. It seeks to promote collaboration and mutual understanding between scholars and practitioners working particularly on social policy, education, development, administration and governance.
While terms such as <em>North–South</em> or <em>South–North</em> dialogue remain widely used, the initiative recognises their conceptual limitations and aims to transcend dichotomous framings. BRIDGED thus envisions a space of encounter that values multiple epistemologies and perspectives, reflecting the diversity of contexts in which perspectives, policies and practices can be discussed, formulated and enacted.
By bringing together research projects, academic outputs and opportunities for exchange, this website aims to create a dynamic interface between research, policy and practice. It is both a repository of scholarly activity and a living network for cooperation.
The long-term vision is to establish the page as a recognised reference point for dialogue and knowledge exchange in the field of social policy, transcending geographical and disciplinary boundaries.