The activity of CETAPS in the period 2007-2010 is expected to reflect the synergies derived from merging IEI (Instituto de Estudos Ingleses) and CEAP (Centro de Estudos Anglo-Portugueses). It will therefore combine new ventures with the extension of some of the defining projects of its ongoing, but now reformulated groups.

The researchers at CETAPS are aware that they launch their expanded unit at a moment in the Humanities that is both challenging and auspicious, in two complementary ways:

• on the one hand, the prevalence in recent decades of critical mores that are averse to any form of disciplinary autarky proves favourable to a set of projects that are eminently relational - involving the study of reception, translation, intertextuality, intermediality, representations of temporal and spatial dynamics, relations in intellectual history;
• on the other hand, the broad consensus that such relational models have generated allows for the discourses that earlier legitimised their rise to relinquish their potentially (and paradoxically) exclusive import; hence, a range of disciplinary approaches that might otherwise be relegated as "traditional" and superseded can be productively retrieved into a more plural scene of academic inquiry. Relevant examples of this include the renewed convergence of criticism and certain forms of textual scholarship; or the recent querying of radical forms of historicism and the re-signification of "presentism".

Against this background, the new research designs to which CETAPS will commit itself, in order to enhance its international status and the quantity and quality of its output, include - as features that concern all its research groups (cf 6.):

1. setting up international graduate programmes through protocols with several European universities; a basis for this will be provided by already established institutional links such as:

1.1. the link between CEAP and the University of Birmingham, reflecting symmetrical research purposes in reception studies (Anglo-Portuguese, Luso-British);

1.2. the agreements recently drafted between IEI and
1.2.1. the universities of Berlin (FU), Utrecht and Murcia with a view to convergent projects, to be in place by 2008, under the general heading Transcultural English Studies;
1.2.2. the universities of London (Royal Holloway), Limerick and Bologna for a thematic network and graduate programme on Utopian Studies;
1.2.3. the universities of Central Lancashire (Preston, UK), Charles University Prague and Debrecen for a network on Irish Studies.

2. consolidating the connections between research projects and graduate programmes (MA and doctoral) both at FLUP and FCSH;

3. promoting a more intense integration of young researchers, creating opportunities for their work to be assessed in international contexts; pursuing a policy of welcoming graduate students as junior team members, intersecting with the concerns described above in 2. and 1. sometimes in the form of co-supervision of theses, and research visits to partner institutions;

4. making the unit's activities and research output increasingly available in electronic formats, partly but not completely superseding conventional printed formats. These will materialise in

4.1. an integrated website, duly updated and complete with searchable databases;

4.2. a newsletter;

4.3. PDF copies, available online, of members' publications (if not covered by copyright impediments);

5. continuing the practice of organising regular international conferences, and supporting the presentation of papers by unit members at conferences elsewhere;

6. continuing the editorial and publishing agenda initiated by IEI and CEAP.

Over the next three years, it is also expected that this general policy will be confirmed and extended in a variety of specific ways:

1. joint organisation of conferences: several events are scheduled already involving either the participation of other Portuguese research units, or of team members who are registered researchers elsewhere. These include:

1.1. the international conference on travel literature scheduled for September 2008 in Lisbon, jointly organised by ULICES and CEAP (planned before this merger);

1.2. the conference of IASIL (International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures), scheduled for July 2008 in Porto, planned at IEI and organised by a committee that includes researchers from three other research units (ILC, ULICES and CES);

1.3. the 10th Utopian Studies Society conference, scheduled for July 2009 in Porto and co-organised by CETAPS and ILC;

2. close research links between groups that integrate different units: examples include the affinities between Mapping Dreams, the group at CETAPS that studies utopias in English, and Literary Utopia and Utopian Thought, based at ILC and focusing on Portuguese texts; also between the work on intermediality carried out respectively at ULICES by research group no.4, English-Speaking Literatures and Cultures, and at CETAPS by the Relational Forms group;

3. the activities envisaged in 1. and 2. crucially depend on the mobility, intellectual flexibility and functionality of research staff who take part in projects devised at more than one research unit. FCT-funded units with which CETAPS shares, in a variety of ways, its research staff - who are either researchers at CETAPS and external team members elsewhere, or vice-versa - include: ILC, CES, ULICES, CEC, CHAM, IEM the UL Centre for History. Some of its members also cooperate with centres not funded by FCT, such as: CETUP (a centre for theatre studies sponsored by the Universidade do Porto) and IJI, a centre based at the Faculty of Law (also at Universidade do Porto);

4. young researchers (in particular graduate students) registered as junior team members with CETAPS will be encouraged by their supervisors to approach experts in related disciplines based at other units. It is expected that this may contribute to the consolidation of pluri-institutional graduate programmes, for which plans are currently being drafted;

5. the forms of networking described above can also relate productively to university extension (or outreach) activities, some of which are either ongoing or imminent; these include:

5.1. two sets of video programmes on the Peninsular War, and on British travellers, that researchers originally from CEAP are currently preparing on a commission from the Portuguese Open University;

5.2. the itinerant public sessions that the Shakespeare and the English Canon researchers originally from IEI have been organising, with the support of local authorities, libraries, etc, to publicise their translations and their research through a series of informal lectures coupled with readings by actors hired for the purpose.