Arqus Annual Conference in Braga
The University of Minho hosts the 4th Arqus Annual Conference “Connecting universities, addressing challenges” from 2 to 4 July. At the conference, of course, there will be representatives of the University of Wrocław!
The 2024 Annual Conference will take place from 2 to 4 July at the University of Minho, in Braga, Portugal with the theme “Connecting universities, addressing challenges”. This Arqus major event aims to enhance dialogue and foster collaboration within the Arqus community, but also with other Alliances and European higher education stakeholders to tackle the significant challenges impacting education, research and innovation, and societal engagement.
“The Arqus Annual Conference is an extraordinary opportunity to share our main challenges and find solutions together”, said Dorothy Kelly, Arqus Coordinator, “this major event is crucial in fostering dialogue and trust among our communities, and in strengthening our collaboration to promote increasingly innovative and impactful education and research. As this year’s main theme suggests, the Annual Conference is about coming together to address the big issues facing not only alliances and higher education, but our society as a whole. At Braga we will be joined by partners and colleagues from other alliances, giving the important message that the sustainability of the European Universities initiative largely depends on our unity.”
The conference is integrated as part of the University of Minho’s 50th-anniversary celebrations and aims to advance the Alliance’s education, research and societal engagement initiatives, strengthening the bonds between its member universities and fostering a fruitful dialogue with other European university alliances and higher education institutions. “I am delighted to host this conference at the University of Minho, particularly as we celebrate our 50th anniversary. There is no better way to commemorate this special occasion than by holding the most significant annual event of our Alliance”, said Rui Vieira de Castro, rector of the University of Minho.
The Conference will officially kick off on Tuesday 2 July at the Gualtar campus featuring Fernando Alexandre, Portuguese Minister of Education, Science and Innovation; Dorothy Kelly, Arqus Coordinator; and Rui Vieira de Castro, Rector of the University of Minho.
Sessions open to the public
The 2024 Arqus Annual Conference will hold four engaging plenary sessions open to the public. Also, the Opening and Closing Sessions and the Arqus Awards Ceremony will be broadcast online.
The sessions taking place on Tuesday 2 July will explore key topics regarding the current challenges in research assessment, education and societal engagement faced by European universities, and how these issues are being addressed within the Arqus Alliance and by experts in different fields. On Wednesday 3 July, the last session will bring inspiring examples from other university alliances: CIVIS Alliance, ECIU Alliance, YUFE Alliance and UNITE! Alliance.
Full programme and registration form are available here.
Arqus Awards’ Ceremony
The Arqus Awards’ Ceremony will take place just before the Closing Session and will present the winners of this year’s Arqus Teaching Excellence Award, the Green Mobility Days Award and the International Innovators Award.
The Arqus Teaching Excellence Award will honour innovative teaching practices from the 2022-2023 academic year in two categories: enabling research-based teaching and enabling students. The recently launched Green Mobility Days Award, a novelty in this year´s conference, will recognize outstanding practices in sustainable international mobility at Arqus universities. Finally, the International Innovators Award, recognizes the best Arqus born-global start-up.
More information about Arqus:
The Arqus European University Alliance is a long-term initiative that brings together the universities of Granada, Graz, Leipzig, Lyon 1, Maynooth, Minho, Padua, Vilnius and Wrocław, nine prestigious comprehensive research universities that share the conviction that European cooperation is essential to the global future of their institutions. Arqus, being a people-centred Alliance, aims to promote a multilingual, international, entrepreneurial and innovative approach in the provision of education, research and innovation. Together, Arqus universities work in the creation of a forward-looking, open, integrated and research-driven European University, building transformative excellence with and for all.
Arqus aspires to transform European higher education, research and innovation through deep cooperation and progressive integration, in pursuit of an equitable and sustainable future by together: educating critical and socially engaged European citizens, equipped for lifelong learning, leaving no-one behind; generating excellent, open, challenge-driven, innovative, and reflective knowledge; acting as a committed multi-level societal and global player. Bringing down barriers to effective cooperation.
The principal ambition of the Arqus Alliance is to act jointly as a laboratory for institutional learning from which to move forward in the design, testing and implementation of an innovative model for deep inter-university cooperation. The Arqus Alliance aims to centre its efforts on enabling people: enabling a widely diverse student body and enhancing their learning experience; enabling a similarly diverse staff community and promoting their individual and collective professional development; enabling society at large by opening our doors and fully responding to the mission it has entrusted us.
More information about Arqus may be found on the Arqus website (https://www.arqus-alliance.eu/).
