Unite! as a guest at the TU
European University Alliance comes to Darmstadt
2024/09/17
Since its foundation in 2019, TU Darmstadt has been the coordinator of the European University Alliance Unite! The alliance now consists of nine partner universities from Finland to Portugal and meets every six months for internal working meetings to work on the shared vision of a European campus. The next meeting will take place from 24 to 26 September in Darmstadt, the II Unite! Branding Event on 25 September will bring Unite! to life for all TU members and external partners.
Under the motto ‘Inspiring People – Sparking Innovation’, around 500 participants, including representatives of the Rhine-Main region, Unite! partner universities and their cooperation partners as well as high-ranking representatives of the European Commission, will come together. The focus is on the cooperation between the universities and society as well as the results of the alliance to date. These include 460 TU students at Unite! partner universities, ten joint degree programmes, joint virtual events and cooperation in research projects and the promotion of start-ups – to name just a few.
“I am delighted that the upcoming Unite! Dialogue is taking place here at TU Darmstadt. With the wide range of offers and in discussions with colleagues from all Unite! partners, our lively alliance and its impact will become even more directly tangible – both for us at TU Darmstadt and for all partners from the Rhine-Main region and beyond, whom we can welcome to the Dialogue and the Branding Event. Unite! inspires us to actively contribute not only to the future of our alliance, but also to new perspectives in the European Higher Education Area. Together as Unite! and with our partners, we will continue to develop creative ideas and thus make new things and innovation possible. I invite everyone: Let Unite! inspire you and become part of the Unite! community.” Unite! and TU President Professor Tanja Brühl.
On 26 September, TU Darmstadt will also host the European Day of Languages for the first time. Together with Unite! and all members of TU Darmstadt, the Language Resource Centre at TU Darmstadt will be celebrating Europe's linguistic and cultural diversity on 26 September in the darmstadtium – a great opportunity to get to know Unite! better. Registration is not necessary. mho
About the European University Initiative
About Unite! (University Network for Innovation, Technology and Engineering) includes TU Darmstadt as coordinator, Aalto University (Finland), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), Grenoble INP-UGA (France), Politecnico Di Torino (Italy), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain), Universidade de Lisboa (Portugal), Politechnika Wrocławska (Poland) and TU Graz (Austria).
Together, the nine partners have 280,000 students and 77,300 graduates each year.
The European Universities Initiative was launched in 2019 to drive forward the creation of a European Education Area by 2025. The European Universities are transnational alliances of higher education institutions from the EU that pursue a long-term strategy and convey European values and identity. The initiative aims to significantly increase student and staff mobility and promote the quality, inclusiveness and competitiveness of European higher education.
In response to an initial call for proposals for the Erasmus+ programme in 2019, the first 17 alliances were selected for a three-year pilot phase to lay the foundations for future European universities. Unite! was among these first 17, with a further 24 alliances following in the second call for proposals in 2020.
The new Unite! funding, which has been running since the end of 2022, falls under the calls for further implementation of the European Universities Initiative. The aim is to develop and share joint and long-term structural, sustainable and systemic cooperation in the fields of education, research and innovation to create European inter-university campuses where students, staff and researchers from all parts of Europe can enjoy seamless mobility and co-create new knowledge across countries and disciplines.
