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Event Interview Video

United Universities 5th Panel Discussion

Europe, 29 June 2021. The UUU Panel Debate n°5 has invited administrators of European University Alliances to talk about the “Powers of the Periphery. How networking empowers regions and fosters creativity.”

Watch the teaser: youtu.be/RYk4iSzYPSk

What is periphery? Is Brussels an appendix of Berlin? Is Berlin a suburb of Leipzig? Haven’t the inhabitants of the Capitals not always been the marginalised? Are the vitamins not in the skin of the apple, rather than in the core? Is Oscar Wilde right that only shallow people do not judge by appearances, and “the true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible…?″ The centre produces the periphery, and how free and diverse universities are, depends on their environment and history, their funding and their inter-relatedness with the world.   This discussion wants to learn about European University Alliances, a little what they are, and a lot how international networking might have changed the meaning of periphery in regard to innovation, science and social development.

Guests

Hannes Raffaseder, composer. He is also Chief Research and Innovation Officer, head of the Institute of Media production at Sankt Pölten University of Applied Sciences, near Vienna in Austria, and coordinator of the European University Alliance E³UDRES² led by his university.

Elena Theodoropoulou, Associate Professor at University of the Aegean in Greece in the field of philosophy of education. As Vice-Rector of Academic Affairs & Student Welfare she is academic coordinator on behalf of the UAegean in the ERUA Alliance. Elena teaches and publishes, among other things, about Education and Ethics.

Rónán Ó Muirthile, academic researcher and educator focused on original storytelling and facilitating others in developing the skills and abilities to tell those stories. He works at the Institute of Art Design and Technology in Dublin, Ireland, where he is also responsible for coordinating his school’s part in the European Universities Alliance for Film and Media Arts or FILMEU.

Audronė Telešienė, professor in sociology and communication at Kaunas University of Technology, Lithuania. She is the project scientific lead at KTU of the SMART-ER project, the virtual research institute for smart European Regions at the ECIU University. Her scientific interest lies on the topics related to public governance and sustainable development.

Eric Tschirhart, Professor of Physiology at the University of Luxembourg and Special Advisor to the rector for the university alliance UNIVERSEH and the Université de la Grande Région. Under the team leadership of Eric, the University of Luxembourg will focus on stimulating entrepreneurial skills among students through university-business cooperation, as well as strengthening the sustainability of the network and its communication. Of particular interest for our topic is the University of the Greater region (UniGR), a regional cross-border network of universities founded in 2008, where 7 universities in Belgium, Germany, France and Luxembourg work together.

Florian Schweigert, Vice President for International Affairs at the University of Potsdam, Germany, and coordinates the EDUC Alliance. In our recent interview about EDUC, a new university alliance including the universities of Masaryk, Pécs, Cagliari, Rennes 1, and Paris Nanterre, he explains the alliance’s focus on shared learning and teaching capacities, and short-term collaborative study programmes. ESNA interview, June 2021

Peter van der Hijden, independent higher education strategy advisor who lives in Brussels. He has worked 23 years for the European Commission where he became Head of Sector Higher Education Policy and contributed to the Erasmus programme, the Bologna Process, Horizon and ERA. He now supports European Universities and promotes micro-credentials.

Host: Tino Brömme, ESNA European Higher Education News, www.esna.tv

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Event Video

United Universities 4th Panel Discussion

Europe, 11 May 2021. European University Alliances are coming with a great promise: to make the ‘student-centred’ university happen, and to create courses and degrees for the 21st century.

As of today, there are 41 of these new alliances or networks across Europe testing co-operative models and involving students, researchers and administration. The European Commission funds these co-operations, and the newly created departments in the universities put them into practice.

4th UUU Panel Debate: “Degree design, competence frameworks, and horizontal mindsets

Watch the teaser: youtu.be/RYk4iSzYPSk

We have gathered for the 4th UUU Panel Debate to see how that actually works! – There is great demand in society to create quality jobs for many, a perspective for citizens of Europe, and an education preparing for a globalised world. What do the efforts look like that the University Alliances put into study programmes for people with a ‘horizontal’ mindset, able to think and work across academic disciplines and national borderlines?

Let’s also ask how education policy evolves – in order to support such a highly complex practice, to create competence frameworks and quality assurance standards coping with diverging national regulations and an uneven economic and cultural pace across the European Union!

Guests

Robert Wagenaar, Professor of History and Politics of Higher Education, Director of the International Tuning Academy in Groningen, and author of “REFORM! TUNING the Modernisation Process of Higher Education in Europe. A blueprint for student-centred learning” (2019)

Antonella Forlino, Professor of Biochemistry, and Prorector of International Relations at the University of Pavia, member of the EC2U Alliance. ESNA interview on Deutschlandradio,15.06.2020

François Taddei, Director of the Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity (CRI) in Paris, advisor to the CIRCLE.U alliance, and author of “Learning in the 21st century” (2020). ESNA interview, 30.03.2020

Maria Gravari-Barbas, former Vice-President for International Relations at Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, and Chair of the Cultural Heritage Focus Area of the Una Europa alliance

Host: Tino Brömme, ESNA European Higher Education News, www.esna.tv

 

Credits

‘The Graduate’ CREDITS: Embassy Pictures (1967). Cast: Anne Bancroft, Dustin Hoffman, Katharine Ross. Director: Mike Nichols. Producer: Lawrence Turman. Screenwriters: Calder Willingham, Buck Henry

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Event Project News Video

United Universities 3rd Panel Discussion

Europe, 13 April 2021. Mingling among journalists, authors, strategy advisors, university administrators, researchers, students — to gain deeper insights into higher education policy in Europe. The initiative ‘United Universities of Europe’ has gathered distinguished guests to discuss the current state of European University Alliances, their recent past and imminent future.

This 3rd UUU Panel Debate navigates between past and future. What’s the status quo of European University Alliances? What did they achieve so far? How did Corona and Brexit affect them? What are their current challenges? What will the future look like for them? Will they change the European higher education landscape or disappear?

Journalist Tino Brömme from Berlin, and higher ed strategist Peter van der Hijden from Brussels, discuss it. A special light on the damage inflicted by Brexit on British and Continental universities is being cast by journalist Anne Corbett, Paris, and Nenad Zrnić, vice-rector of the University of Belgrade.

What does the future hold? — Pedro Marques talks about his research on university-society interaction in science-fiction literature, and European students reflect on their utopia of the future university, before Brömme/van der Hijden consider what the upcoming decisions of the European Council mean for European Universities.

Guests:

Anne Corbett is a Senior Associate at LSE Consulting with long-standing experience in the field of higher education and Europe as a researcher, a journalist and a contributor to public policy. She holds a PhD in political science and a BA in History. Her work has appeared in the education press and British dailies. She continues to write for University World News where she recently published A mercantilist approach to higher education post-Brexit. Her books include Universities and the Europe of Knowledge.

Pedro Marques is specialised in regional development, innovation and governance in peripheral regions of the EU. He works at ingenio, a research institute affiliated with the Technical University of Valencia, a member of the European University Alliance ENHANCE. Not only is he a Ramon y Cajal fellow but also a principal investigator in a Innovative Training Network funded by the European Union. He is co-author of the research paper Fiction lagging behind or non-fiction defending the indefensible? University-industry (et al.) interaction in science fiction.

Peter van der Hijden is an independent strategy advisor, helping European University Alliances on the design and further strategic positioning of their proposals. He has worked for the European Commission where his main experience lied in higher education and research: the Erasmus Programme, the modernisation agenda for universities, the European Higher Education Area (Bologna Process) and the European Research Area. His latest article, Mitigating brain drain by connecting universities, discusses a policy report of the European Commission.

Nenad Zrnić is Vice-Rector for International Relations at the University of Belgrade, a member of the European University Alliance Circle U. He is a full professor in the field of material handling and logistics, a corresponding member of the Academy of Engineering Sciences of Serbia. Since 2015 he is a coordinator of one of the working groups for preparing new Serbian Law on a Higher Education.

As part of the 3rd UUU Panel Debate, students of the Una Europa alliance were interviewed about the question: How is your ideal university of the future? They had just participated in Una Europa’s first Student Congress on February 24, 2021. — Their answers showed how aware today’s students are of flexible learning paths, of the world’s ever stronger interconnections and of their own potential to contribute to better learning and teaching environments? The participants are Emily Hartmann (Freie Universität Berlin), Giacomo Zanni (Università di Bologna), Hubert Jakub Bieniek (Uniwersytet Jagielloński), Luca Di Cunto (Università di Bologna), and Weronika Łukasińska (Uniwersytet Jagielloński).

Host:

Tino Brömme, a graduate in communication science and media consultancy, has worked for over 30 years as a journalist, publisher, moderator and event manager across Europe. He was the founder of the multilingual student magazine WORK|OUT, and the news agency ESNA. He publishes articles and multimedia content, mainly on science policy, and is currently preparing a documentary film about Universities in the 21st Century.

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News Video

UUU Panel 1 – Intermezzo with higher ed news

Berlin, 3 November 2020. This intermission is part of the first UUU online debate, organised by ESNA Higher Education News, as part of the Berlin Science Week 2020. The lead question is: “United Universities of Europe? How European University Alliances transform higher ed”

See the first half of the UUU panel debate here, the second half here. During this intermission, UUU Director Tino Brömme addresses the following important European higher education news:

EU top court finds Hungary education law in violation of EU rules
curia.europa.eu/…

EU budget 2021 Rapporteur on hunger strike for climate, health and jobs and for the introduction of a financial transaction tax
multimedia.europarl.europa.eu/…

How scientists are preparing for the split
media.nature.com/…

Paris student rent more costly than London – report
thepienews.com/news/…

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News Podcast

European Universities on national radio 3

Berlin, 22 June 2020. The proposal to condense some of the interviews conducted with university staff, students, administrators and experts about the EU-funded European Universities Initiative — and about modern university development in general — resonated well in the educational radio magazine “Campus & Karriere” of Germany’s national radio channel Deutschlandradio.

Episode 3:
The university alliance CHARM-EU presents itself. Our reporter speaks with Katalin Németh, internationalisation officer of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, and Gilles Subra, researcher and coordinator at the University of Montpellier. Both universities are members of the CHARM EU Alliance. The alliance’s structural feature of inter-university work packages and task forces is being explained.

 

UUU wants to thanks all alliance members and all you beautiful people of being so frank and patient and available to explain, especially in these stressful times of restrictions, home office and online work. Thanks to you it was possible to make this radio programme and to develop an interesting format that mirrors and accompanies the alliances’ genisis.

The producers of the programme – who are part of the creative process just like all the interview partners – are, apart of the author Tino Brömme, sound and editing genius Andreas Hagelüken in Freiburg who normally produces sophisticated radio plays and sound installations (randfunk). Also aboard are the two German voices Marco Höhmann, an actor, commedian and project manager, as well as the brilliant Matia Sprenger who just finished her high school diploma with honors.

The upcoming episode of the radio series will feature Daniela Trani from the alliance YUFE, and Dominic Orr from YUFE associate partner KIRON Open Higher Education.

Creative Commons Lizenzvertrag Photos for social media can be downloaded here: Ep. 1 Forlino | Ep. 2 Maria & Genís | Ep. 3 Gilles and Katalin | Podcast studio with author Tino Brömme

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News Podcast

European Universities on national radio 2

UUU has launched a radio programme on German national radio – Deutschlandradio – presenting and discussing European Universities. The second of four episodes has now been aired.

Berlin, 17 June 2020. June has been a good month for the United Universities of Europe project (UUU). The proposal to condense some of the interviews conducted with university staff, students, administrators and experts about the EU-funded European Universities Initiative – and about modern university development in general – resonated well in the educational radio magazine “Campus & Karriere” of Germany’s national radio channel Deutschlandradio.

Episode 2: A conversation with two students, Maria Michailova, Russian exchange student at the University of Tampere, Finland, a member of the alliance ECIU, and with Genís Vives, student representative at the University of Barcelona, a partner of CHARM-EU. The students show how drastically different was (and is) the emergency situation under Corona restrictions in different countries.

 

The producers of the programme – who are part of the creative process just like all the interview partners – are, apart of the author Tino Brömme, sound and editing genius Andreas Hagelüken in Freiburg who normally produces sophisticated radio plays and sound installations (randfunk). Also aboard are the two German voices Marco Höhmann, an actor, commedian and project manager, as well as the brilliant Matia Sprenger who just finished her high school diploma with honors.

The upcoming episodes of the radio series will feature Katalin Németh, internationalisation officer of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest (CHARM-EU), and Gilles Subra, researcher and coordinator at the University of Montpellier (UNA EUROPA); Daniela Trani from the alliance YUFE, and Dominic Orr from YUFE associate partner KIRON Open Higher Education.

Creative Commons Lizenzvertrag Photos for social media can be downloaded here: Ep. 1 Forlino | Ep. 2 Maria & Genís | Ep. 3 Gilles and Katalin | Podcast studio with author Tino Brömme