SELGIFS (Study of emission line galaxies with integral field spectroscopy) is a recently started exchange programme supported by the Seventh Framework Programme of the European Community for Research, Technological Development and Demonstration Activities under the funding scheme of Programme “PEOPLE” – Call ID “FP7-PEOPLE-2013-IRSES.
The collaboration comprises five nodes: Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM-SP), Centro de Astrofísica da Universidade do Porto (CAUP), Leibniz Institut für Astrophysik Potsdam (AIP), Instituto Nacional de Astrofísica, Óptica y Electrónica (INAOE, Mexico) and Australian Astronomical Observatory (AAO)

Integral field spectroscopy (IFS) is a powerful technique that permits spatially resolved spectroscopic studies of extended sources in an efficient manner. This technique has flourished through large-aperture, high-resolution telescopes, and spectrographs equipped with Integral Field Units (IFU), have been developed in the past few years (PPAK, SINFONI, VIMOS, GNIRS, SAMI, etc.) or are planned for the future (e.g. MUSE, MEGARA, KMOS).
The demand for these instruments is rapidly increasing due to improvements in the spatial resolution and size of modern telescopes existing and foreseen.
However, this rapid development on the instrumental side must be accompanied by the corresponding development in specific analysis methodologies, both in what concerns the data analysis itself and the theoretical modelling and interpretation.

The main objective of the SELGIFS collaboration is to establish a long lasting partnership that a) facilitates a side-by-side exchange of knowledge between theoreticians, observers, and instrument developers; and b) develops the required tools in time to take full advantage of the IFS data to come in the next years.
The ultimate goal of the SELGIFS collaboration is to apply sophisticated chemical evolutionary models and robust spectral population synthesis analysis techniques to existing and future cutting-edge IFS databases, in order to constrain theories on the star formation- and chemical enrichment history of galaxies, progressing from one-dimensional models (e.g. radial abundance gradients) to a truly bi-dimensional understanding.