Eight European experts to form the EUNICE alliance Advisory Board

This milestone took place during the EUNICE General Assembly which gathered several bodies and working groups of the alliance at the headquarters of the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu (Portugal), from 31 March to 2 April: over a hundred people including rectors, vice-rectors for research, the EUNICE Board of Directors, the Student Advisory Board, ESN association, as well as the project management, pedagogical excellence, mobility and experiential learning working groups.

The new advisory board is composed by eight representatives from sectors extremely relevant to the alliance’s activities such as higher education, research, politics or business. They are: Anna Budzanowska, member or the Board of Directors of EuroScience; Maria Stoicheva, coordinator of Transform4Europe Alliance; Joe O’Hara, from Dublin City University; Isabel Menezes, fromUniversity of Porto; Leena Pöntynen, from Technology Industries of Finland; Joël Gallegos, from University of North Carolina at Charlotte; Dorothy Anne Kelly, coordinator of Arqus Alliance; and Rodrigo Martins, from Nova University of Lisbon.

As per the words of the president of the Polytechnic Institute of Viseu, Jose Costa, host of the General Assembly, “this GA is not only a meeting, it is an opportunity to engage in meaningful dialogue to exchange ideas and to re-inforce our dedication to the core values that define the European academic landscape”.

The president of EUNICE European University, Abdelhakim Artiba, also president of Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France said that “we need to build a university that I would describe as a university of fulfillment, a university in which students appropriate European values and culture, a university that knows how to nurture its academic, artistic and sporting talents”. He remarked that the European University “cultivates otherness, reinforces equality of opportunity and continues to innovate and open up”.

The Vice-Rectors for Research met and explored new ways to foster collaboration between researchers in the EUNICE alliance. The next steps in this area are to identify research groups working in the 32 sub-clusters defined in the Horizon Europe programme, in order to facilitate their submission of joint proposals with other groups in the EUNICE network.

About EUNICE

EUNICE, the European University for Customised Education, founded in 2020, is a transnational alliance of public universities and currently present in ten countries: Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain and Sweden. Together they aim to transform students’ and teachers’ experience by enabling customised learning paths at a European scale; developing good practices for knowledge sharing among staff, interdisciplinary research and educational approaches capable of tackling the global issues of our time; and ensuring that research and innovation address the socio-economic challenges that their regions face.