Abstract

We aim to share the experience of one the European University Alliance, Una Europa, in creating sustainable support structures for transnational R&I collaborations. We will engage participants in a dynamic discussion on the possible approaches, practices and solutions to face the challenge of building sustainable institutional processes beyond the lifespan of individual projects. We also aim to facilitate co-learning and to allow the participants to identify benchmarks and contacts all over the world to support their work.

Universities are increasingly engaged in projects focused on organisational change and capacity building. The expertise of research managers is crucial not only for the success of these projects, but also for the creation of institutional processes and structures that become sustainable in the long term. The steps undertaken by European University Alliances to start building a barrier-free, common R&I ecosystem is emblematic of this endeavour.

The H2020-SWAFS programme funded pilot projects aimed at delivering shared R&I strategies and action plans as well as trans-national collaboration formats, to lay the basis for sustainable institutional changes on different dimensions (e.g. R&I strategy, research infrastructures sharing, open science, etc.). The strong commitment of Una Europa beyond our H2020-SWAFS capacity building project Una.Resin, is to create a long-standing systematic support to the research collaboration seamlessly integrated into institutional structures and workflows. This is a highly challenging endeavour if we consider e.g., the different organisation of research support structures and processes and the need to commit stable institutional resources to design and implement formats for supporting trans-national R&I collaboration activities.

Our experiences show that knowledge exchange and systematic collaboration among research managers is key. Una Europa has established thematic networks of dedicated professional staff (i.e. Clusters) to serve as the backbone for the support of the academic R&I collaboration, institutional development and to allow professional development and co-learning of the research professionals. In the Una.Resin project, a grant matchmaking format was piloted, with the aim of facilitating consortium-building for Horizon proposals. After the end of the project, the implementation of this matchmaking format has been identified as one of the most strategic activities of the Alliance.