Almost 800 students, research and staff members who belong to the Aurora Alliance will be able to study and do research in other institutions thanks to the project that has just been awarded by the European Commission

The European University Initiative led by the European Commission aims to create a new generation of Europeans who can work together across frontiers, disciplines and languages to respond to social challenges and the lack of competencies in Europe. With this objective, it is funding transnational alliances between European universities to promote the quality and the competitiveness of higher education.

Aurora Alliance is one of these transnational alliances that consists of nine universities from nine countries, one of which is the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV). The project was selected in the last call of the European University Initiative and will allow universities to work together for three years on teaching and research through a variety of activities funded with 10 million euros.

The project aims for 800 students, lecturers, researchers and technical and administrative personnel belonging to the Aurora Alliance universities to engage in study and research visits at partner universities, share classes and educational resources by means of a shared platform with a thousand teaching units and even take part in virtual mobility programmes. In fact, because of the concern about climate change but bearing in mind the importance of a significant international experience, short-term virtual and on-site mobility programmes will be encouraged alongside internationalisation at home.

Nevertheless, the project goes much further and the long-term goal is to convert it into a transnational multi-campus university that tackles social and environmental problems in the regions of all the universities and proposes solutions through research, teaching and multi-disciplinary communication. So programmes and disciplines will combine to respond to four challenges; sustainability and climate change; the digital society and global citizenship; health and welfare, and culture; diversity and identity.

A framework of competencies will be set up that will be shared by all the universities and their curricula will have the same skills and learning outcomes. This will mean that the courses done at other universities will be easier to recognise and it is hoped to reinforce the evidence that learning through services and international practicums help to develop particular skills.

The nine universities that make up the Aurora Alliance have a total of 260,000 students and 31,000 workers: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Holland); Háskóli Íslands (Iceland); Universität Duisburg-Essen (Germany); Universitat Rovira i Virgili (Spain); Universität Innsbruck (Austria); Università degli Studi Di Napoli Federico II (Italy); Univerzita Palackého v Olomouci (Czech Republic); Handelshøjskolen i København (Denmark); University of East Anglia (United Kingdom).

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