17 October 2022
Erasmus University Rotterdam
The "UNIC Strategic Conference", a strategic event for UNIC, the alliance of European universities of post-industrial cities in which the University of Deusto participates, will be held at Erasmus University Rotterdam (The Netherlands) from 17 to 19 October. Eight universities launched the alliance in 2020: Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany), University College Cork (Ireland), Koç Üniversitesi (Turkey), Université de Liège (Belgium), University of Oulun Yliopisto (Finland), Erasmus University Rotterdam (Netherlands) and Sveučilište u Zagrebu (Croatia). These 8 universities will be joined by two new ones: the Polish Uniwersytet Łódzki and the Swedish Malmö Universite".
The aim of the Strategic Conference is to agree on a common vision for the development of this European University. Prior to this meeting, three cross-cutting teams, with representatives from the different universities, worked on the following issues:
- UNIC's purpose and mission statement
- Governance structures and ways in which UNIC can ensure the involvement of institutions and their university communities.
- UNIC’s thematic areas for education and research collaboration: sustainability, green cities, urban resilience, inclusion, superdiversity, smart cities…, as well as in collaborative teaching and research methodologies.
The teams have involved representatives from different groups at the university: teaching staff, researchers, students, employees, cities and local institutions and administrations.
In Rotterdam, work will be done on the outcome of this process, focusing on the development of educational programmes and research projects to be carried out in the future UNIC, as well as on the backbone/differentiating themes of the UNIC Alliance.
The university delegations are made up of around fifteen people chaired by the university rectors and also include various university community leaders, as well as representatives of the entities involved, such as the Basque Government and the Bilbao City Council, which will participate online in some of the conference sessions.
The outcome of this process will lead to the continuity of the UNIC Alliance's pathway, which the member universities will present to the new phase of the European Universities funded by the European Commission in early 2023.
