Tourism has led to economic development, lifting large sections of the population out of poverty. However, mass tourism can jeopardize the sustainability of the places visited. This raises issues related to pollution or the irreversible damage and destruction of ecosystems, gentrification, which makes many places uninhabitable, but also prejudices and repulsive feelings between visitors and the visited, which can jeopardize the longed-for interculturality and sustainable development of the communities visited.

The 13th MIIS Conference thus aims to be a space for reflection on some of the multiple effects that tourism has on contemporary societies, and especially on the conservation of cultural heritage, leading to social development. Our challenge is to think about the relationship between tourism and cultural heritage in order to promote sustainable development. This conference will therefore feature thematic panels and round tables, as well as free papers to be submitted.

This conference aims to underscore the urgent need to confront not only the material destruction but also epistemic erasure or, in other words, the silencing of Palestinian knowledge, voices, and histories, within academia and socio-political as well as cultural spaces. Israel’s epistemic violence has been perpetrated through different levels and in different fields, as an ongoing narrative of silencing and erasing the Palestinians as a people. We recognise that documenting the unprecedented violence and dispossession currently taking place, is not only a scholarly task, but an urgent and ethical one - one that bears witness and asserts the right to narrate and to exist.

Porto ICRE'26 - the 5th Porto International Conference on Research in Education - will occur in Porto between July 21 and 24, 2026 (July 21 is exclusively online. July 22 to 24 is exclusively in-person).

As in the previous edition (Porto ICRE'24), Porto ICRE'26 is organized by the Centre for Research and Innovation in Education (inED), of the School of Education of the Polytechnic Institute of Porto, a structure that brings together researchers from different interrelated areas of knowledge who contribute to the comprehensive, consistent and systematic study of Education.

At this conference, the centrality of education takes into account the Sustainable Development Goals, contributing in particular to the discussion on quality education, well-being as an indicator of success, diversity as a guiding principle for training and educational practices and artificial intelligence as a pressing challenge in educational contexts.

In this conference, the centrality of Education is articulated in alignment with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and with the strategic mission of the Centre for Research and Innovation in Education (inED), which seeks to foster research and innovation in the broad field of educational sciences, enhance collaboration across national and international contexts, and promote interfaces between research, professional practice, and policy (ined.ese.ipp.pt). Three main areas are included: Teacher Training and Professional Development; Special Education and Inclusive Pedagogy; Social Challenges, Culture, and Education.