The future of the social and human sciences at NOVA is full of challenges, but also opportunities. In a world of constant change, the relevance of these disciplines is essential to understanding and addressing the challenges of our time. Whether it is technological advances or pressing social issues, the future demands a deep understanding of human dynamics.
In particular, a Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities that also embraces the arts will be all the more successful the more it embraces interdisciplinarity, integrates technology and promotes innovative approaches. In this sense, the ability to adapt curricula to reflect social and cultural changes will be a key factor in ensuring that our students are better prepared to face the challenges of the future.
It is a little of all this that we are trying to develop at the Faculty of Social and Human Sciences (NOVA FCSH): teaching that is fundamentally based on research experience, and the training that we can offer students based on up-to-date knowledge that is not dogmatic and that is also based on the students' own experience. It is therefore very important that the training guarantees not only an in-depth knowledge of the field in which one works, but also knowledge and access to other sciences and other dimensions of knowledge.
Being integrated in a university with the characteristics of NOVA, which has a multiplicity of areas that can and should be articulated, social and human sciences are not isolated from other areas of knowledge - from economics to law, from technologies to health.
It remains to say that all this investment will be impoverished if it is not linked to the ability to create value, to form partnerships with the outside world, to introduce a series of improvements in continuous and lifelong training, based also on the practice of those who live outside the gym. We will always have to update ourselves to ensure that what we do remains at a high level, integrating not only the scientific and pedagogical development of our areas of work, but also investing in what is important for society and the planet (based on this concept that we value so much at this University): its sustainability.