Exploratory event towards a European Universities Initiative Thematic Group

Exploratory event towards a European Universities Initiative Thematic Group

Exploratory event towards a European Universities Initiative Thematic Group

EARMA and the European Universities Initiative

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Event date: March 15, 2022

Event time: 10am - 12pm CET

Location: Online meeting 

The European Universities Initiative, supported by the Commission in 2019 and 2020, offers one vision of how European Higher Education may evolve in the future. The European Universities Initiative is a potent collaboration between more than 200 organisations across 41 alliances and leverages the individual capabilities and capacities of these members to build new organisations, creating opportunities for students together, better than any could provide on their own. EARMA strongly welcomes and supports these new, vibrant and exciting collaborations. 

Reflecting the history of the programmes evolution, the concentration has been on the delivery of the academic and related aspects of the collaborations. The essential cog in the machine for the successful delivery of these universities are the administrative services and, particularly in relation to the Research and Innovation aspects, the RMAs across these universities.

EARMA is keen to support members and the wider community of RMAs in their efforts to support these universities. With this in mind, EARMA is proposing to establish a 'Thematic Group' focusing on these universities. EARMA would now like to gauge interest in such a 'Thematic Group'. To do that, we are holding two events : 1 remote event, March 15, 2022, and a second in-person event, May 19, 2022.

The 1st event (15th March 10:00 - 12:00 CET) will concentrate on these universities and how they are progressing and will be opened by Professor Ludovic Thilly Vice-RectorPoitiers/ EC2U, the Secretary General of the Coimbra group and the convenor of the FOREU2 high-level coordination group who will speak about the Initiative and how it is likely to evolve. This will be followed by 4 short presentations followed by Q&A from individual university networks, confirmed participants are Una Europa, EUt+, 4EU+ and UNIVERSEH.

The 2nd event on May 19, 2022, will take those presentations, your reflections and continue the conversation with the intention of establishing the 'EARMA Universities Initiative Thematic Group' and its work programme for the coming years.

EARMA looks forward to welcoming you at these events at the dawn of a new era in European Higher Education.

 

Agenda

You can view the programme here

 

Bios contributors

Prof. Ludovic Thilly is Full Professor and Executive Vice-Rector for EC2U Alliance and European Networks at the University of Poitiers (France). He also serves as Coordinator of the EC2U Alliance and Coordinator of the HRS4R label. Member of the Executive Board of the Coimbra Group of Universities since 2015, he was elected Chair in June 2017 and renewed in June 2020. Ludovic Thilly is a Physicist and works on the deformation mechanisms of (nano-) materials. He has co-authored 70 publications in international peer-reviewed journals (incl. 4 book chapters) and given 50 invited lectures at international conferences and institutions.

Katrien Vanelven studied Ancient History and graduated with a master’s degree from KU Leuven. She joined KU Leuven’s International Policy Unit in 2009, as Advisor on Europe and North America. She coordinated KU Leuven’s participation in Erasmus Mundus Action 2 and Erasmus+ International Credit Mobility. Since spring 2018, she has been contributing to the establishment of the Una Europa alliance. In Una Europa’s 1Europe project, she leads the work package ‘The European University Ecosystem’, creating a sustainable ecosystem in which Una Europa can thrive. As one of the actions towards empowering and supporting staff, Una Europa established Flexible Support Services, a permanent unit consisting of thematic clusters of professional staff that work closely together in an interdisciplinary way.

Dr. Hideko Matsuo (Demography, PhD, Groningen) works at the Research coordination office (DOC) at KULeuven for the UNA.Resin project (pilot project of Una.Europa to build Una Europa eco-system) since April 2021. She co-leads the WP2 to prepare and implement the analysis of research infrastructure policies and resources at overall strategic university level and to map research infrastructures in two specific domains (i.e. cultural heritage and one health). She also co-chairs the cluster on Open Research in Una.Resin. Prior to working at DOC, she worked at the Center for Sociological Research (CeSO, KULeuven) on survey methodology and historical and contemporary demographic research projects.

Torben H. Hansen is a senior executive EU adviser at UCPH, and work primarily with pre-award support, funding strategies and influencing relevant stakeholders. Before joining UCPH, he worked as EU adviser and pre-award specialist in the Capital Region of Denmark, and at the Technical University of Denmark as a research adviser and EU specialist. In the distant past, he was member of program committees under FP4 and Denmark’s COST Senior Official. He has been involved in EU’s framework programmes since FP3. Torben holds a M.Sc. in Social Anthropology from the UCPH.

Hakima Fassi Fihri is a Paris-born woman, with an international and multicultural profile. She is a law school graduate and have expertise in the internationalization of higher education: international partnership development ; university international cooperation ; management and development of European and international projects in education and teaching. Since November 2020, she is in charge of the operational coordination of the European project « 4EU+ Alliance – European University » and the 4EU+ local office at Sorbonne University (France). From 2011 to 2019, she was appointed as Director of international relations and partnership development at the « Université internationale de Rabat » (« UIR »), a State-owned, Morocco-based university and one of the leading universities in Africa. She was also a member of its managing board. Before 2011, she was serving for many years as a legal advisor in international Paris-based law firms (Norton Rose and August & Debouzy), with a focus on Europe/MENA region relations.

Dr. Timothée Toury is Corporate Secretary of the European University of Technology Alliance (EUt+). He co-initiated the original idea and the vision of the EUt+ initiative and led the structuring of this bid. He has been Associate Professor at Université de technologie de Troyes since 2006. He has been Director of Academic Affairs of UTT (2012–2015) and First Vice-President of Université de Champagne from (2016–2017). He graduated from Ecole normale supérieure de Paris and Cachan (now ENS Paris-Saclay) where he obtained a PhD in physics in 2005. He has been a research engineer for technology transfer at the CNRS. He has more than 45 international reviewed papers, international patents, book chapters… mainly in optics, quantum mechanics and nanotechnology. He has been leader of 5 and involved in 8 European, national and regional research projects. He has been associate professor at the Ecole militaire in Paris for 8 years. He is an expert for the French Commission des titres d’ingénieurs (ENAEE member), World Bank and AFD in university governance and higher education and pedagogy reform.  He leads two CBHE European projects for the development of technological higher education in Africa. He has been a member of numerous executive boards or steering committees of higher education institutions.

Yvonne Desmond is the Open Research Manager in TU Dublin, Ireland. A long-time advocate of open scholarship, she is now involved with the EUt+ Alliance to promote and develop open research in the EUt+. Among the specific deliverables of the project is an EUt+ institutional repository and an academic press for the European University of Technology. Yvonne will present the progress of these initiatives and important lessons learned.

Eric Tschirhart round

Eric Tschirhart is a full professor of physiology at the University of Luxembourg, special advisor to the rector, coordinating UNIVERSEH European University and University of the Grater Region. Professor Eric Tschirhart has a PhD in Pharmacology and a MBA. Having worked in the pharmaceutical industry and public research institutions, he joined the University of Luxembourg in 2002, participated in the expansion of Life Sciences in Luxembourg, before taking serial managerial positions at the University of Luxembourg, in research, finance & administration, technology transfer and academic organization as vice-president. He teaches physiology in Medical and Life Sciences programs and has been supervising PhD candidates recurrently. Professor Eric Tschirhart has more than 50 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals in physiology, pharmacology, drug development and medicinal chemistry.

 

Bios initiators

Eleonora Zuolo works at the central Research and Innovation Department at Sorbonne University. She has a 12-year experience as a Research Manager. She has supported researchers at both the unit level (2009-2012) and the central administrative level (2013-present) at 3 different higher education and research institutions in France. Her key competences include consultation in pre-award, professional development, institutional representation and engagement strategies. She is a trainer for both researchers and research staff. Eleonora has been a member of EARMA since 2014. She was part of the 1st cohort of the European Certificate in Research Management and is currently involved in the Association as Board Member.

Dr. John Donovan, former Chairman of EARMA and Head of Research at Technological University Dublin in Ireland, is a PhD in molecular genetics from the National University of Ireland.  In 1986 he worked at the Institute of Biochemistry in the University of Frankfurt and after 3 years moved to the University of Leeds. Returning to Ireland in 1992, he took up a position as Senior Scientist with St. Luke’s Institute of Cancer Research. In 1994 he moved to a position as Executive Secretary of the Irish Research Scientists’ Association and was responsible for many of the briefing and policy documents prepared by the Association that ultimately led to the establishment of Science Foundation Ireland and The Programme for Research in Third level Institutions with a combined budget of some €13b. Having left the bench, John moved into research and innovation management and, for the present, is Head of Research at Technological University Dublin.  John has served on the board of EARMA for 6 years including 4 years as EARMA Chairperson. His current interest is what makes research sustainable in new, small universities and the transition to ‘Open Research’.
John is on a number of national and international policy groups, including Ireland’s National Open Research Committee and was on the Irish Government’s Higher Education Research Group.
John has been a radio journalist, co-produced and presented, what was until recently, Ireland’s longest-running science radio show and The Millennium Thomas Davis Lecture Series on Irish public radio broadcaster, RTÉ. John has also done time as an itinerant PhD examiner in various places in Ireland and Europe. John is married to Lynda and has one child, a son.

Dr. Evelina Brännvall is the Chair of the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators (EARMA) and working as an external funding specialist at Grants Office of Luleå University of Technology (LTU) in Sweden. In her everyday work supports university’s leadership and researchers in external funding issues, in creating and maintaining good relationships with national and EU funders. Evelina has a background in Natural Sciences (geology) and have a quite a long experience in research, research management and in evaluating the research project applications. She has one PhD in Environmental Engineering (Lithuania, 2006) and another one in Waste Science and Technology (Sweden, 2013). Evelina transitioned into the research management in 2014. Since then, she has been on various EARMA Committees, graduated the first cohort of the EARMA Certificate Programme in Research Management. She has been on the Annual Conference Programme Committee since the very beginning and chaired it for two years. She is a co-organiser of EARMA Leadership programme. She was an EARMA Board member (2017-2021) and from 2021 she is an elected Chair of EARMA. She has also been on the board of the Swedish Association of Research Managers and Administrators (SWARMA) for almost two years.

 

Contact

For further information, please email events@earma.org