UNA Europa innovative university alliance receives funding
Twenty years after the Bologna Declaration, the seven leading research-intensive universities of the UNA Europa alliance have been granted 5 million euros to kick-start their joint strategy to create a European campus.
UNA Europa is among the first 17 university alliances to receive this funding under the Erasmus+ Pilot Call for European Universities.
Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne is a founding member of UNA Europa alongside six other leading European research universities: Freie Universität Berlin (Allemagne), Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna (Italie), The University of Edinburgh (Royaume-Uni), Uniwersytet Jagielloński w Krakowie (Pologne), KU Leuven (Belgique) and Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Espagne) . At the centre of educating and shaping Europe’s intellectual tradition for almost 1000 years, the UNA Europa partners’ shared heritage and ambition to shape Europe’s future is a driving force in the alliance’s strategy.
The UNA Europa partners have already launched collaboration in four thematic focus areas: European Studies, Sustainability, Cultural Heritage and Artificial Intelligence. These focus areas promote true multidisciplinarity and cross-fertilization of knowledge across the sciences and humanities and across the seven campuses. The ambition is to progressively involve the entire academic community of the seven partners in UNA Europa activities and to create a true European campus.
To boost this vision of a European campus, UNA Europa will launch its three-year project, 1EUROPE, in December 2019. The 1EUROPE project will test Joint Innovative Formats for international education and mobility, and aims to attract the best and brightest talent from around the world.
The 1EUROPE project will also set up a laboratory on the future of universities. The laboratory will generate new concepts for international education and research, integrating them across the seven partners and also fostering their transfer to other institutions. Emily Palmer, Secretary-General, UNA Europa, said: “UNA Europa aims to create a University of the Future that is not only international and innovative, but also open and inclusive.”
Demonstrating their long-term commitment to the University Alliance Europe, the seven founding university partners formally established UNA Europa as a non-profit association under Belgian law (vzw) on 1 February 2019. The UNA Europa association is strategically placed on the Brussels campus of KU Leuven, at the interface of the universities and the EU institutions, and will ensure the sustainability of the alliance.