From just a few dozen students and staff in its early days, the Faculty today boasts a close-knit community of over 1700 students and 250 staff members, teachers, researchers and administrative staff.

Four major teaching and research disciplines have marked the Faculty's development and over the years have become its pillars: economics and political and social sciences first, then management and communication.

Far from the usual silos, the Faculty makes it a point of honor for its chosen disciplines to collaborate, question and feed off each other in order to develop the skills of students and researchers so that together they can contribute to the challenges of a society in transition, whether economic, political, social, environmental or digital.

The Faculty's three missions are:

• To train students and researchers for their future role as experts and responsible decision-makers through scientifically rigorous, hands-on teaching, developing their critical thinking and openness to the world,
• To ensure ambitious, high-quality research in its areas of expertise, aiming for international scientific impact, open to interdisciplinarity, which feeds teaching, innovation and social and societal debates,
• To be a responsible player in the development of our society on the economic, social, environmental and political levels, by sharing knowledge, advising and assisting in decision-making both regionally, nationally and internationally.

It is therefore only natural that the FSESG should become the Faculty EMCP, a name now incorporating communication and political sciences and reflecting the importance they have acquired in recent years. Four disciplines united to prepare students and researchers in a transdisciplinary way for the challenges of tomorrow.

"EMCP is therefore more than just a name change. It embodies a vision," emphasizes Pietro Zidda, Dean of the EMCP Faculty.

And beyond the symbolism, EMCP embodies the vitality of a faculty embedded in the University of Namur, proud of its values of openness, excellence, sustainability and freedom, putting people at the center of its concerns, in the service of humanity and the common good.

Within the Faculty, various projects and teaching experiments illustrate this EMCP vision:

• (New in 2024) UNamur School of Management. Gone are the days of everything to do with "business administration", as the Faculty renames its department to reflect its resolutely responsible and sustainable vision of management: helping to create and make a success of shared, responsible projects, whether for-profit or not.
• (New in 2024) Specialized Master's degree in Management and Economics of Sustainable Development (MEDD). In addition to the transformation of existing programs with the aim of reinforcing transdisciplinarity in the service of transitions, a new program with a staggered timetable sees the light of day. The MEDD master's degree aims to rethink public policies, corporate strategies, and modes of collaboration, production and consumption, in the light of today's environmental and societal challenges.
• (New in 2024) The Journées d'Education au Développement Durable et à la Transition écologique (JEDDT) are the perfect example of this desire to break down the barriers between disciplines in the service of transitions. Aimed at students from all faculties in a cross-disciplinary perspective, these days, in which the Faculty actively participates, enable them to work creatively in workshops and multidisciplinary teams on themes linked to the challenges of transitions, mixing legal, political, economic, managerial, medical, philosophical, scientific, IT and other perspectives.
• Learning by Doing is a pedagogical approach developed by the Faculty, which fundamentally alters university teaching as traditionally conceived. Knowledge is acquired through concrete projects, practice and experience. These are intended to be collaborative and interdisciplinary, and intensify over the course of the curriculum. Revolutionizing university pedagogy, they now form the backbone of the teaching programs offered by the faculty. The aim is to lead students, thanks to the monitoring and coaching of teachers, to decompartmentalize subjects and mobilize their knowledge and skills around concrete cases linked to the challenges of transitions.
• Regards Croisés aims to cultivate the critical thinking of the Faculty's students about a topical issue by offering a cross-disciplinary look at the different disciplines taught. The question is tackled in different courses, and teachers invite each other to cross-fertilize their contributions. The initiative culminates in a conference at which experts from the world of associations, politics and business are invited to debate with students.
• Service Learning is a pedagogical approach aimed at incorporating societal commitment into traditional academic teaching. The aim for students is to apply skills worked on in courses in various disciplines to become involved in an organization whose missions relate to societal themes, such as social justice, migration or the environment.

In January 2024, Michel Ajzen joined UNamur's Department of Management Sciences as Professor of Organization and Innovation Management. In addition to his professorial role, he is also a member of the Creativity and Innovation Research Center (CIRCE) within the Namur Digital Insitute (NaDI), where he continues to explore the innovative and sustainable dimensions of hybrid work.

Michel Ajzen's research focuses primarily on organizational and managerial innovation, with a particular interest in hybrid work. His thesis, focusing on telecommuting during the crisis, provided the foundation for his current work on "sustainable hybrid work". He strives to understand the organizational, managerial and human stakes of temporal and spatial flexibility and technologies in work.

He examines the reconfiguration of work relationships in hybrid environments, the management of comfort differences with these new modalities, and the challenges of preserving the collective and commitment to work. He also explores the crucial role of proximity managers in this context, focusing on their sustainability and questions of well-being at work, inclusion and sustainability. His research highlights the risks of over-individualization of work and the ethical implications in terms of equity and collective solidarity. He advocates a contextual, trans-disciplinary approach to exploring sustainable solutions, in close collaboration with stakeholders in the field. Its aim is to develop critical thinking and innovative management practices in response to contemporary challenges in the world of work. It contributes to enriching the field of management through its in-depth reflections and significant contributions to understanding hybrid work and its impacts on organizations and their members.

Michel Ajzen began his academic career at the Catholic University of Leuven, where he obtained a master's degree in human resources management. He then continued his studies with a PhD in Management Sciences at Louvain. During his doctoral years, Michel was an assistant at the School of Labor Sciences in Leuven, which enabled him to gain solid pedagogical experience while conducting rigorous research.

After obtaining his PhD, Michel Ajzen was awarded a four-year contract as a post-doctoral fellow at Leuven. Alongside his post-doctoral work, he held the position of research manager of a chair in human management, demonstrating his ability to juggle academic, high-level research and team management roles. He was also a visiting lecturer at Louvain.

Floriane Goosse's thesis explores how voice assistants (such as Alexa and Google Assistant) can improve the well-being of users in vulnerable situations, particularly visually impaired people. More concretely, her research aims in the first instance to understand how these technologies can impact the well-being of these users, and help them and their families on the path to resilience. Secondly, it seeks to personalize voice assistants to better meet the needs of these people. The aim is to adapt not only technical functionalities, but also more subtle aspects such as intonation and voice type. This personalization could play a therapeutic role, helping users - and their loved ones - to better accept and manage their disability. This study represents a major advance in understanding the role of technology and in promoting the inclusion and well-being of vulnerable groups in society.

The efforts of this research team have been crowned with success. In June 2024, this work won the prestigious "Best Research Paper Award" at the American Marketing Association's SERVSIG 2024 conference in Bordeaux. The originality and societal impact of the subject were particularly commended. The methodological approach of the work was also highlighted. Indeed, through fieldwork with associations helping the visually impaired, this research shows a potential to transform and impact lives.

Wafa Hammedi emphasizes the importance of the societal impact of her PhD student's research and, more broadly, that carried out at UNamur's Centre de Recherche en Marketing et Management des Services, the NaDI-CeRCLe. "Our research aims to promote a more inclusive society and make this world a better place for all," adds Wafa Hammedi. "The potential lies in applying the results to change something in these people's world. It also questions the meaning of what an academic does. You have to have passion for research, and we're even more passionate when we know that what we produce will have meaning. "

The University of Namur stands out here for the societal impact of its research, transforming it into concrete solutions for a more inclusive society. Floriane Goosse and her co-authors have high ambitions for the future. Their work demonstrates that academic research can and must have a direct impact on society. International collaboration, particularly with renowned institutions at the cutting edge of technological advances such as Maastricht University, strengthens the relevance and innovation of research projects!

Eight researchers have been awarded an aspirant mandate to start doctoral research:

• Ilario AMATO, Dorian HÈNE, Violaine PIENGEON and Camille PONSARD from the Faculty of Science,
• Hadrien COUSIN from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters,
• Aline NARDI from the Faculty of Law
• Angela LÜLLE and Elena PEREZ VELASCO from the Faculty of Economic, Social and Management Sciences.

The success rate of our doctoral researchers is 30%!

At postdoctoral researcher level, UNamur is proud to welcome eight new research fellows for a 3-year term (success rate: 30%).

These are

• Andrea BONVICINI, Damien DETRAUX and Louise THINES from the Faculty of Sciences
• Hannah DE CORTE, Angela COSSU, Silverio FRANZONI and Mounir HABACHY from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters
• Juliette CRESPIN BOUCAUD from the Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences.

In addition, Mr Vincent LIEGEOIS has been promoted to the title of "Maître de recherches".

Let's also mention the receipt of a subsidy for scientific publications (periodicals), one for Benoît CHAMPAGNE and the second for Carolin MAYER.

Congratulations to them!