In these times, priority will be given to the following topic: the renewal of economic thought, underpinned by the study and updating of economic theory and dialogue with other disciplines, namely economic sociology and law. In addition, we intend to foster reflection on the relation between strands of economic thought and analysis and the social responsibility of university research: to what extent does it make sense to talk of the neutrality of economic science? 

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An output of the activities of the TL should be the development, one the one hand, of training methodologies and scientific practices that understand training itself and research as “democratic experiences” that include forms of integration and communication of innovative knowledge and, on the other hand, of spaces of external communication that can feed more open and broader debates and, in so doing, rescue the original purpose of Academia. 

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The preparation of the unit’s Strategic Programme has to be taken as an opportunity for a reflexive analysis of the unit’s current functioning and research practice. Within this framework, particular attention is to be devoted, apart from the unit’s contributions for the period 2018- 2022, to the new formulation of the integrated thematic lines and to the codification of the ethical principles of the units. Among those principles, social responsibility of science. including the commitment of making research results accessible and usable by institutions and organized stakeholders as well as by individual citizens, deserve special emphasis. 

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The RCSL 2018 Conference mentioned before includes several initiatives of reflexive kind, in particular a session about the policies of some of the most relevant journals in the socio-legal field. 

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Several researchers of D’C will participate in the organization of a Symposium of the ISCTE-IUL School of Sociology and Public Policies on the teaching of sociological theories, with a particular focus on the classic issue of theory and practice, worth being revisited nowadays, considering the changes in the context in which students do study and will work in the near future. 

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We consider that these activities planned for 2018 do fit the more general aim formulated and introduced in the 2017 Action Plan, Development of citizenship capabilities.