20 February 2025
Bilbao Campus
On February 20, the presentation of the winners of the first edition of the Eusko Ikaskuntza research support program took place at the headquarters of Eusko Ikaskuntza in Donostia. The aim of the program is to promote future research lines and to develop analysis, prospective and research works.
Twenty-four proposals were submitted to the first call for proposals, of which three will receive a net grant of 2,000 euros. Two of the winners are a professor and a student at the University of Deusto.
Elene Igoa Iraola is a psychologist, doctoral student and lecturer at the University of Deusto in the Faculty of Health Sciences. Her study is entitled “Demographic decline: the main challenge for institutions in the Basque Country”. This project, presented in Basque, offers, in the opinion of the jury, “a strategic vision of the long-term planning of Basque institutions, which has a direct impact on their capacity to maintain competitiveness and social cohesion in a specific demographic context”.
On the other hand, Mihiret Elisa Zarate Beitia is a student of the degree in Social Work. The winning work, also presented in Basque, is entitled “What governance do social services in the Basque Country require to guarantee care?”. The jury considered that the project “has the capacity to generate recommendations to improve the structure of social services, addressing the governance and sustainability of care systems in Euskadi” and that “this strategic approach is fundamental for the development of public policies in the future”.
The third winning project is by Amaia Rodriguez Aguirre, a doctoral student at the Université Bordeaux Montaigne, on the influence of the Grand Oral test of the final secondary school exam in France on Basque-speaking students.
The winners explained the reasons that led them to present their projects and thanked for the support received at the event. They were accompanied by the vice-rector of the San Sebastian Campus and Language Policy, Xabier Riezu, who was a member of the jury together with the other 6 universities of the Basque Country; and the vice-dean of Social and Human Sciences, Felix Arrieta, who directed the Final Degree Thesis of Mihiret Elisa Zarate Beitia from which the awarded research project derives.
