Knowledge Innovation Centre

Who are we?

The Knowledge Innovation Centre is a dynamic consultancy focusing on knowledge brokerage and innovation of knowledge transfer processes. The Centre brings together a variety of local and European experts from diverse fields and has worked extensively within Quality Assurance of Higher Education, Technology Enhanced Learning, Student Services and knowledge economy (as it relates to the Lisbon Agenda and Barcelona Process). The Centre has forged close relationships with a number of stakeholders in the regional innovation and Higher Education fields and is active in leveraging such relationships to build multi-disciplinary, multi-country networks for knowledge transfer and capitalisation.

The Centre also offers a variety of online solutions geared at maximising quality assurance mechanisms, public relations and services. KIC has been involved in over 20 research projects in the last decade and specialises in knowledge transfer of educational policy projects. As such, it serves as a technical-support partner for all matters linked to web-development and design, as a community coordinator for social activities, and as a communications consultant for all dissemination and exploitation-linked activities. In each case, it translates project results into digestible outputs and getting them into the hands of the appropriate target groups be they students, educational researchers, institutional leaders or policymakers.

Why we are Participating in the Project

KIC has extensive experience working in the area of Professional Higher Education (PHE), a sub-sector of tertiary education where KIC has been putting much effort in the past years through several EU-funded project, especially in relation to quality assurance, work-based learning and knowledge transfer. Our aim with RECAPHE is to complement previous work done, by approaching PHE from their role in applied research, development and innovation, in particular within their regions and towards regional actors.

Our Role in the Project

At the RECAPHE project KIC will collaborate with the partners in the development of all intellectual outputs and co-lead  the creation of online Training Videos and Infrastructure on Research and Innovation Competences for PHE (Intellectual output 3). Across the project KIC will also lead on the internal and external communication and the project dissemination planning and support the project co-ordinator in quality monitoring and risk management.

Our Team

Anthony Camilleri

Anthony Camilleri

Senior Partner

Anthony’s expertise are Quality Assurance processes and knowledge transfer of research. Within Quality Assurance he has given training on techniques for peer-review to quality assurance agencies around Europe, and contributed to the UNIQUe and ECBCheck guidelines on quality assurance of e-learning. With respect to knowledge transfer, he has worked with several associations to better describe their research outcomes through their communication channels, included through improved and more targeted web presence, better social media handling and production of final publications, including most recently OERTest and EQUNET. He has also developed a methodology for improving impact measurement of dissemination and exploitation activities within EU projects. Mr. Camilleri was previously engaged as Quality Services Manager for EFQUEL, where he was responsible for coordination of projects linked to OER including OERTest and VMPass.

Sandra Feliciano

Sandra Feliciano

Research & Innovation Associate

Sandra graduated in Social Sciences, post-graduated in Evaluation in Education and has over 20 years of experience with quality management applied to complex sectors where the human factor is critical, such as Education, Health and Social Care Services, Government and Aerospace, where she is an experienced international consultant and trainer as well as a qualified Auditor and Evaluator for several Accreditation and Certification schemes in these sectors. Aside from her work at KIC, she is also a Lecturer at Porto Polytechnic, where she teaches Standardization and Management Systems Audits at Master level. Having worked with policy making and national, European and international standardization since 2008, she represented Portugal and Angola at ISO/TC176 during the last revision of ISO 9001 and lead the development of ISO 21001, the first ISO Management System Standard for Educational Organizations, published on May 1, 2018. She currently leads ISO CASCO/TC 232 WG 58 and ISO TC 232/WG 8, acting as Co-Convenor for the development of requirements for bodies providing audit and certification of educational organizations management systems and guidelines to audit educational organizations, respectively. She has been nominated for, and subsequently won, the CEN-CENELEC Standards+Innovation TBO 2021 Awards. More information can be retrieved from her LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/felicianosandra/

Nik Heerens

Nik Heerens

Research & Development Associate

Nik has been working in the field of higher education for the last 20 years, mostly related to the Bologna Process, Quality Assurance, students’ engagement and regional development. He has been director of the European Students’ Union, head of sparqs (student partnerships in quality Scotland) and held senior management positions at overseas development organisations SPARK in the Netherlands and Signal in the UK. Nik is currently holding a position as research & development associate at KIC where he mainly focuses on projects related to Quality Assurance, work-place learning and social inclusion.