The Uppsala Campus 2050 Steering and Project Group visited Campus Groningen on 19-20 September to meet their colleagues from Groningen, Ghent and Göttingen.
During the two-days visit the collaboration between City, Universities and UMCG in "Campus Groningen" was presented as an example of best practice. On occasion of the visit also Uppsala, Ghent and Göttingen presented their City-University collaboration with regard to campus building and student housing.
In the framework of the Ghent-base project 'Established and Emerging Methods: Uses and Variation', a two-day seminar was organized with the main emphasis on qualitative research methods, both established and emerging, as undertaken by doctoral students, post-doctoral researchers and senior professors. The seminar involved academics from three of the U4 universities: Ghent, Uppsala and Groningen.
The aim of the seminar was two-fold. On the one hand it sought to produce an inventory of practices and approaches in qualitative research across U4 universities. On the other hand, it aimed at generating a scientific community between researchers, upon which a long-term collaboration can be built.
Ghent University and the European University Foundation invited higher education staff dealing with international partnerships or quality assurance professionals to join this cutting-edge training on quality in university partnerships.
The concept of sustainable development is now widely recognised in politics, society and science. The declared aim is that people living today can satisfy their needs without risking that future generations will no longer be able to do so. It is all about ecological sustainability, social justice, economic sustainability and citizens' participation in shaping social and political processes. 'Bildung' plays a key role in this. For this reason, the foundation stone of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) was laid at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in the Agenda 21. This was followed by international initiatives such as the UN Decade for ESD (2005-2014) and the World ESD Action Programme.
The conference deals with the concept of sustainability, prepares objectives and approaches of ESD and provides a forum for exchanging views on the opportunities and challenges of ESD.
The IPT&L cycle changes format and will continue as a conference in 2019: 'From Theory to Practice. From Discussion to Cooperation. Conference on International Perspectives on Teaching and Learning' (Uppsala, 16-17 May 2019).
Over the last six years, the U4 project International Perspectives on Teaching and Learning (IPT&L) accumulated a pool of alumni with more than 120 academics.
