Get ready for Unite! 2.0

The VI Unite! Dialogue is fast approaching

2022/09/16

To close the pilot phase of the Erasmus+ project and launch the future activities, the Alliance will hold the VI Unite! Dialogue in Politecnico di Torino, with task force meetings and public plenary sessions.

Politecnico di Torino (PoliTO) is hosting the VI Unite! Dialogue from the 20th until the 22nd of September, bringing together the activities developed in the Unite! Erasmus+ and the H2020 pilot phases, in the perspective of the Alliance activities recently funded for the next 4 years. The activities of the Unite.H2020 pilot will be one of the main Dialogue topics, with the ambitious aim of bringing together the Alliance’s Education and Research&Innovation communities for the first time.

There are three open events at the core of the Dialogue:

  • the “Unite! present and future impact” roundtables involving external stakeholders;
  • the “Unite! common R&I agenda and action plan” roundtables, presenting the UNITE.H2020 strategy and ongoing joint pilot actions;
  • the roundtable on the perspectives of collaboration among Alliances related to the CLUSTER network, the cradle of Unite!.

In addition, the Dialogue will include the Presidents & Rectors’ Strategic Workshop and a series of Board meetings: The Governing Platform, the Steering Committee, the Unite! Students organization (SURE!), and the Academic Forum. The program is completed with Task Force and Work Package meetings as well as a Poster session.

Previous Unite! Dialogues

Unite! Dialogues are the key format to raise the visibility of Unite! in the member universities and their ecosystems, and to disseminate the Unite! vision among university faculty, staff and students. Previous Dialogues were:.

Unite!

The European Universities Initiative

The European Universities Initiative was launched in 2019 to push for the establishment of a European Education Area by 2025. European Universities are transnational alliances of higher education institutions from across the EU that share a long-term strategy, promoting European values and identity. The initiative is designed to significantly strengthen student and staff mobility and to foster the quality, inclusion and competitiveness of European higher education.

In response to a first call of the Erasmus+ Programme in 2019, the first 17 alliances were selected for a 3-year pilot phase to lay the foundations for future European universities. Unite! has been among these first 17. Another 24 alliances followed in the 2nd call in 2020.

Unite!’s new funding starting end of 2022 falls into the calls of the further roll out of the European Universities Initiative. It plans to increase the number of European Universities to 60 with more than 500 universities by mid-2024, supported under Erasmus+ with an indicative budget of EUR 1.1 billion for the period 2021-2027. The aim is to develop and share a common long-term structural, sustainable and systemic cooperation on education, research and innovation, creating European inter-university campuses where students, staff and researchers from all parts of Europe can enjoy seamless mobility and create new knowledge together, across countries and disciplines.”