The COVID-19 pandemic has had profound consequences on the social, economic and cultural life at the global level. The educational dimension has also been affected in the schools’ regular functioning, with the temporary closure of educational institutions, as well as the impediment of face-to-face classes. This perspective paper aims to add to the knowledge already produced on this topic, by arguing that these challenging conditions can be a pivotal moment of opportunity for reshaping higher education, with the implementation, development and diffusion, among academics and students, of digital technologies. The paper also discusses the role of leadership in the transformation of organizational culture in higher education. The methodology used to carry out this study is qualitative, and the technique employed to analyze the data collected was content analysis. Research studies, in diverse formats, already published on the COVID-19 topic and its impacts were the elected data sources. The results of this document analysis allow us to conclude that there is the need to improve the digital sustainable development in teaching in higher education, which entails profound challenges that higher education institutions need to face and overcome if they want to be at the forefront of success in the international education market. This is where the authors seek to contribute, by offering insights on the challenges—but also the opportunities—that COVID-19 poses to higher education at a time when it needs to redefine its teaching methods, leadership models, and interaction channels, by going digital towards the improvement of the sustainable development of its teaching.

At a time when the labour market is blocked and simultaneously rapidly changing, with the emergence of new professional and scientific areas, the higher education mission becomes less indisputable and more indeterminate and challenging. This uncertainty was the leitmotiv for this essay, which aims to discuss the importance of attaining transversal competences in higher education. To achieve this goal, a bibliographical research was carried out on the attention that is currently given by higher education institutions to this topic, how they respond to the need for increasingly more transversal training and how they develop a curriculum that meets these requirements. Thus, in methodological terms, a thorough research on the literature addressing the topic of transversal competences was carried out; subsequently, a document search was conducted and a qualitative review and analysis of the documents collected was performed to justify our stance. Our analysis allowed concluding that the context of indeterminacy regarding the future has variations, considering the geographical and political situation, the social context and the activity sector. Furthermore, attitudes, expectations and predispositions are also critical elements for the success of this process of transversal competences’ attainment. This latter factor is central in this process, as there is often a gap between students’ expectations regarding the competences they expect to attain in higher education and the proposals that frame their training at the micro, meso and macrosocial levels and which take the need to attain transversal competences in higher education for granted.

The emergence of COVID-19 caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus at the end of 2019 changed the face of the world. Deep consequences are being felt across the whole world at all levels. This opinion piece aims to provide a picture of the Portuguese educational scenario, specifically the impact of COVID-19 in education and government measures to mitigate it, the hindrances and the challenges ahead.

The pandemic caused by COVID-19 has profound consequences on social, economic and cultural life worldwide, and is affecting, throughout the world, the regular functioning of educational institutions at all levels, with their temporary shutdown and the impossibility of face-to-face classes. This study aims to add to the analysis of the implications of this context in the reformulation of education shaped by the digital. To fulfill this goal, the authors carried out a document collection, and also mobilized their experience in the research and teaching of this topic. It is concluded that these unforeseen circumstances may be a key moment of opportunity for reformulating teaching, with the implementation, development and dissemination among teachers and students of digital technologies in shaping a society that is, itself, increasingly digital, notably Society 5.0. To this end, and as main implications, the agents of the educational process, teachers and students, due to their traits and various reasons, will have to prepare for student-centered learning through the intentional and sensible mobilization of digital technologies in a complex process, in which each agent will be, ultimately, a critical content creator with enhanced digital literacy. In the contemporary digital society, the school needs to reinvent itself, which is even more pressing with the Covid-19 pandemic. Aspects such as training, internet access infrastructure, hardware and software, digital literacy, and students and academics' teaching and learning strategies are essential. The school offers, thus, a critical contribution to social cohesion and social equity through digital inclusion in education for sustainable development.

Academic conferences have always been privileged spaces and moments for the dissemination of new scientific knowledge, as well as for social interaction and for the establishment and development of social networks among scientists. However, the virtual dimension of conferences, in which individuals are not physically present in the same place, begins to emerge as an increasingly used possibility, which implies a different framing of these scientific events. This paper seeks to comparatively analyse several models of academic conferences, putting forth their advantages, limitations and potentials. Furthermore, it also seeks to reasonably envision the importance and challenges to be faced in the near future. The analysis allows concluding that virtual conferences tend to take on an increasingly central role in this type of scientific dissemination, but without totally relegating the conference mode with face-to-face interaction. Moreover, there may be conferences that emerge as a hybrid between these two types of conferences, in an attempt to provide their main benefits to the various participants. However, the insufficient literature on this topic calls for the need to develop and deepen studies in this area that allow understanding this academic and social, but also economic phenomenon, in its broader implications.

The objective of this concept paper focuses on the relevance of the analytical potential of Social Sciences for understanding the multiple implications and challenges posed by the COVID-19 contagion–pandemic dyad. This pandemic is generating a global threat with a high number of deaths and infected individuals, triggering enormous pressure on health systems. Most countries have put in place a set of procedures based on social distancing, as well as (preventive) isolation from possible infected and transmitters of the disease. This crisis has profound implications and raises issues for which the contribution of Social Sciences does not seem to be sufficiently mobilised. The contribution of Social Sciences is paramount, in terms of their knowledge and skills, to the knowledge of these problematic realities and to act in an informed way on these crises. Social Sciences are a scientific project focused on interdisciplinarity, theoretical and methodological plurality. This discussion is developed from the systems of relationships between social phenomena in the coordinates of time and place, and in the socio-historical contexts in which they are integrated. A pandemic is a complex phenomenon as it is always a point of articulation between natural and social determinations. The space of the discourse on the COVID-19 pandemic can be understood as the expression of a coalition of discourses, i.e., the interaction of various discourses, combined in re-interpretative modalities of certain realities and social phenomena. The circumstantial coalitions of interests, which shape the different discursive records and actions produced by different agents of distinct social spaces, enable the acknowledgement and legitimation of this pandemic threat and danger, and the promotion of its public management.

The digitalization of societies, accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, is an unstoppable process. This paper seeks to answer the question: what post-COVID-19 digital competences are needed for a sustainable society? It also aims to analyze the digitalization processes in education for shaping a sustainable digital society. A bibliographic search was performed on some of the most relevant international databases of scientific literature and the selected documents were analyzed through a content analysis. It is concluded that digital education has experienced a strong increase, reinforced by COVID-19, shaping the digital presence in all dimensions of life. However, it is not sufficient to assume that the new generations are naturally engaged in and can master digital social sustainability. The results demonstrate the importance of literacy and the unavoidable promotion of sustainability in a digital society. However, this digitalization of the educational process poses several challenges: it requires both software and hardware conditions, as well as digital literacy as a result of a complex of literacies. It also implies that teachers and students change their standpoints and practices with the attainment of new teaching and learning competences in order to fight the digital divide and to foster the widest possible social inclusion for the promotion of sustainable society—digitainability.

In today’s world, digitalization, the virtual and being permanently online become normality, corresponding to individuals’ current and future expectations, with an increasing impact, without forgetting those excluded from this reality (digital divide). Society 5.0 seeks to foster this reality. As a concept initially political-ideological, Society 5.0 currently allows for the development of various analyses on this process of shaping a society where the digital is increasingly present at the service of sustainable social and economic development – a super-smart society. This paper aims to develop an analysis of the challenges that old and new potential social inequalities pose to social inclusion in this super-smart society. The methodology used in this study is qualitative. The authors carried out a search for publications in the field under study in several international databases and used the technique of content analysis. The results allow concluding that, while it is certain that the concept of Society 5.0 initially had a Japanese national dimension, it tends, with modifications considering the distinct features of several countries, to be applied by those regions of the globe that seek future sustainable development (economic, social and environmental).   Received: 23 November 2020 / Accepted: 2 February 2021 / Published: 5 March 2021