Econcult professor and researcher Jordi Sanjuán is completing a research stay at the Università degli Studi "Gabriele d'Annunzio" Chieti - Pescara. During the two months he has spent in Pescara (Italy), he has actively collaborated with the interdisciplinary research group BACH (Biobehavioral Arts and Culture for Health, Sustainability and Social Cohesion), with which Econcult shares related lines of work and complementary visions. The BACH group is made up of renowned researchers such as Pier Luigi Sacco, Alessandro Crociata, Tiziano Antognozzi or Valeria Pica, among others, as well as a large group of predoctoral researchers, and currently participates together with Econcult in the consortium of the European project AI-Secrett.

At the beginning of the stay, Jordi Sanjuán gave the seminar "Intersezioni tra economia, cultura e benessere. Percorso di ricerca, interessi emergenti e opportunità di collaborazione" (Intersections between economy, culture and wellbeing. Research trajectory, emerging interests and opportunities for collaboration), in which he presented his main lines of research and common points were identified in order to mutually reinforce ongoing research and initiate new research.

On the basis of these meeting points, various avenues of collaboration have been established, among which the analysis of the relationships between cultural practices, social structure and collective intelligence would stand out. Jordi Sanjuán has stated that "the BACH centre proposes a groundbreaking approach because it studies the social changes promoted by culture from a biobehavioural perspective; that is, starting from the basis of understanding how humans behave and how our brains work. The potential synergies of that prism with the research we carry out at Econcult opens up almost infinite possibilities". In fact, as a result of these close collaborations, the launch of a special issue of a specialised international journal, which will be jointly coordinated by researchers from Econcult and BACH, will soon be announced.

The Econcult researcher has also had the opportunity to share some of his technical knowledge by giving an introductory workshop on "Machine Learning," mainly aimed at the predoctoral researchers of the Italian group. "Beyond the work of these two months, the aim is to build a stable international collaboration network between València and Pescara, with a vocation for continuity over time", concluded Jordi Sanjuán.