University of Algarve

e-Tourism - This includes applications for business management and tourist destinations.  It also includes more specialized issues such as helping with risk management, local restaurants (e-menu) or local lodging (e-booking), the contribution of new types of economy, namely the sharing economy and its respective IT platforms.

Tourism, Hospitality and Restaurants - Includes human resource management and the effects of new technologies on innovation practices and on their relationship with human resources. Alongside hotel management, there are specific dimensions of gastronomy, culinary arts and food production that need to be flagged and   to explore niches in the agro-food/food service/food industry sectors that have the potential to generate new innovative products and services underpinned by a health and safety perspective.

The Smart System Laboratory (SSLab) comprises three specialized units [https://smartsys.ualg.pt], namely:

Tourism Economics and Management - focused on development and capitalization of tourism economics decision support systems for public policy and business planning; efficient management accounting systems; tourism contributions to the circular economy; strategic and operational marketing instruments for business and destination competitiveness.

The group's research profile covers a number of topics in the field of finance and accounting, with particular emphasis on financial economics, international accounting, IFRS, accounting quality, disclosure, time series analysis, optimal portfolio weights, hedge ratios, energy economics, risk management and portfolio diversification, auditors and analysts and bankruptcy.

 

The group's research profile covers a wide range of topics in the fields of Economics and Finance, with particular emphasis on Financial Economics, Economic Integration, Business Cycles, Monetary Economics, Regional Economics, Economics of Innovation, Economic Policy, Labor Market, Income Inequality, Economic Growth and Development and Tourism Economic Impacts.

Following its emergency in Africa, human populations started migrating and dispersing within and outside Africa. Current research indicates that climate changes and increased human population density may have triggered both human inventive and adaptive behavior and dispersal. To better understand prehistoric behavior and human dispersal in Africa, our team is developing groundbreaking research on the past social and cultural interactions between human populations and between humans, the environment and other species surrounding them.

Eurasia played a critical role in unravelling details of our evolution from the appearance of the earliest Homo species to the transition from Neanderthals to Homo sapiens around 40,000 years ago. The ICArEHB’s group 'Dynamics of Paleolithic People in Eurasia' explores the cultural, social, and environmental interactions that occurred during the Pleistocene across this vast and diverse geographical area. Its goal is to contribute towards a better understanding of the factors that led to our status as the only surviving species on Earth.

The transition from hunting-gathering-fishing to agriculture as the main form of obtaining dietary calories was one of the key moments in human evolution. It occurred at different times in distinct parts of the world. Often, this led to an increase in social complexity, inequality and to the appearance of state societies. We analyse traces left behind in the archaeological, bio-anthropological and palaeobotanical records, while evaluating the relationship between daily human activities and ecological/climatic changes overtime.

Two main areas are developed in UAlg: Sustainable Water and Resources Recovery area and Computation for Sustainability areas. In the Sustainable Water and Resources Recovery area we work in resource efficiency by ‘closing the loops’ through greater recycling and reuse, which is a cornerstone of sustainability policies where wastes and water are seen as resources.