UNIC’s expands its offerings: more courses, degree programmes and events in store for the whole alliance
The alliance will be working towards enhanced mobility through hybrid campuses and course offerings, PhD and other research programmes, micro-credentials, seminars and roundtables, and an intensified focus on the Alliance’s flagship “CityLabs”, which create opportunities for knowledge exchange between universities and the cities they’re embedded in. From now on, UNIC will be known as the European University of Cities in Post-Industrial Transition (originally The European University of Post-Industrial Cities).
The University of Oulu is part of UNIC, which began operating in autumn 2020. European Universities are an initiative of the European Commission aimed at establishing a European-wide education, research and innovation area while increasing mobility. European Universities work ambitiously to establish deep inter-institutional cooperation. The goal is to increase knowledge-based development of the economy, job-market and wellbeing in Europe.
Engaging nearly 20 million Europeans
UNIC’s initiatives benefit nearly 20 million citizens, students, staff, and researchers in post-industrial cities across Europe. The next phase of the alliance aims to further boost development of knowledge and co-creation through collaboration, innovation and inclusion for societal impact and improvement. Building on the foundation established in the last 3 years, the “2.0” Mission Statement and tweak in the Alliance’s name highlight UNIC’s renewed objectives: unlocking models of inter-institutional learning, teaching, and research that are profoundly engaged with diverse post-industrial urban ecosystems.
“Since 2020, our unique identity has already provided a solid foundation for our joint European Alliance to deepen and widen the shaping of the future of our cities. Our impact is in educating our students as change agents of the future. UNIC aims to set a positive model for European cities on how to bring together learning, engaged research and urban innovation to create societal impact and improvement, and to help with the major transitions that will define Europe’s future,” said Prof. Dr. Ed Brinksma, President of Erasmus University Rotterdam.
“The University of Oulu was the last to join UNIC for its first phase, but during the past two and a half years we have gotten a strong role in the alliance and had impressive results to our work. This is thanks to a motivated team working behind UNIC and of course our Faculties which have been very active in the alliance,” says Development Manager Henna Määttä.
The Alliance is already rolling out new programmes and offerings that reflect this renewed mission: a Seed Fund for Collaborative Engaged Research Projects was launched in December 2022, and a charter for the UNIC Centre for City Futures will be announced soon. UNIC’s innovative Hybrid Campus will set the foundations for state-of-the-art mutual exchanges, launching Blended Intensive Programmes, virtual courses, and joint degrees to an even wider community of students, researchers and citizens.
“I am looking forward to deepening the collaboration with our cities to actively listen and stay abreast of the latest data sources,” said Dr. Sari Hirvonen-Kantola, Engaged Research Officer at the University of Oulu.
About UNIC
The European University of Cities in Post-Industrial Transition (UNIC) brings together ten universities throughout Europe to boost development of knowledge and co-creation through collaboration, innovation and inclusion for societal impact and improvement.
UNIC’s member universities include:
University of Deusto, Bilbao, Spain
Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany
University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
Koç University, Istanbul, Turkey
University of Liège, Liège, Belgium
University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland
Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands
University of Zagreb, Zagreb, Kroatië
University of Lodz, Łódź, Poland
Malmö University, Malmö, Sweden