About the institution
Universidade Aberta (UAb) is the public Portuguese distance education university. Pioneer in distance higher education in Portugal, it was founded in 1988 and has been promoting actions related to higher education and continuous training. It has contributed to developing important know-how that allows it to be the biggest provider of online courses in the country.
UAb is among the European mega-providers of e-learning, playing a prominent role in 1st and 2nd cycle (graduation and master’s) educational offering, and also offering PhD programmes. Universidade Aberta’s pedagogical model is based on e-learning and on the intensive use of new tools for online communication, collaboration and learning.
Part of UAb’s mission is to conduct research, support the participation of teachers and researchers in scientific institutions, and promote cooperation and cultural, scientific and technical exchanges with similar national and foreign institutions. UAb hosts research units including the Distance Education and e-Learning Lab (LE@D), the Study Centre for Migration and Intercultural Relations (CEMRI), and the Center for Global Studies (CEG-UAb).
For HUMAN-AI, UAb provides seconded staff with comprehensive office and ICT facilities — an e-learning platform, robust communication infrastructure, VPN access, Wi-Fi, wired networks, videoconferencing systems and technical equipment. UAb has strong potential in organising conferences, seminars, training sessions, workshops, courses and cultural events. The library offers access to B-ON (Online Knowledge Library).
Team
Prof. Pedro Isaías
Associate professor with Habilitation at Universidade Aberta in Lisbon. Previously associate professor at higher education institutions in Australia. At UAb he is responsible for several courses in Information Systems and is a member of the coordination team of the postgraduate programme in Digital Innovation and Business Analytics. Former director of the master’s programmes in Management/MBA and Electronic Commerce and Internet (10 years). Author of several books, book chapters and papers; has chaired multiple conferences and workshops, and led several EU-funded research projects. Current research focuses on Learning Technologies, Data Analytics, Business Intelligence, Digital Transformation, e-Business and WWW-related areas.
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Prof. Diogo Casanova
Vice-Rector for Innovation, Quality and Digital Transformation at Universidade Aberta, and Assistant Professor in Education and Distance Learning. His work focuses on digital education, online assessment, learning design, quality assurance and pedagogical innovation. He has held academic leadership roles in Portugal and the UK, led major institutional transformation projects, and published extensively in higher education and digital learning.
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Prof. Isabel Huet
Distinguished international academic career in higher education pedagogy, doctoral supervision and teachers’ professional development. With more than 25 years of experience across European universities, her work examines how staff and students engage in teaching, learning and doctoral supervision, with particular attention to enhancing quality across face-to-face, blended, hybrid and distance education. Researcher at LE@D (UAb) and at CIDTFF (Universidade de Aveiro), Senior Fellow of Advance HE, and Honorary Doctoral Supervisor at the University of Liverpool, where she has supervised doctoral students on the EdD programme since 2017. UAb lead investigator for the Erasmus+ CRED4TEACH project (2023–2026) on micro-credentials for teachers’ professional development. Recent work includes research on chatbots and artificial intelligence in higher education.
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Prof. Maria do Rosário Bernardo
Assistant Professor at Universidade Aberta in the areas of Economics, Management and Information Systems. Research interests include decision-making, e-government, chatbots, business intelligence and smart cities. Senior researcher at INESC TEC, in the ISAC (Information Systems & Applied Computing) group of the HumanISE (Human-Centered Computing and Information Science) centre. Has served on scientific committees of national and international conferences and journals in information systems.
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Prof. Isabel Roboredo Seara
Assistant professor in the Department of Humanities at Universidade Aberta and senior researcher at the Centre for Linguistics at Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Research associate at LE@D, where she coordinates the DIGITHUM – Digital Humanities project. PhD in Portuguese Linguistics; conducts research in Discourse Analysis — specifically Digital Discourse, Textual Linguistics, Pragmatics and Portuguese Language Teaching — with a particular focus on studies of interaction in digital environments.
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