Edinburgh University is a member of the UNA Europa alliance of eight universities which includes Freie Universität Berlin, Università di Bologna, Helsingin Yliopisto, Uniwersytet Jagielloński w Krakowie, KU Leuven, Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne.
Since Brexit it’s obviously more important than ever to us to keep our connections with our friends and partners in European universities. Michael Gallagher and I have been working as Edinburgh leads on a UNA Europa programme of work called the Future UniLab, tasked with conceptualising and building a preferable future for Europe’s universities.
The Future UniLab started by defining a set of key challenges – or ‘fundamental problems’ – facing European higher education, which include the values we bring to bear on universities, our approach to integration across institutions, how to work toward sustainability and which infrastructures and mechanisms we will need to put in place to build a future in which universities can thrive. Each challenge is approached by a series of appointed visionaries and implementers, who come up with the big ideas and the pragmatic possibilities aligned with our key challenges.
More information is available on the FUL web site – and please get in touch if you’d like to know more.