Bielefeld University is part of the NEOLAiA network, an association of nine young, dynamically developing higher education institutions in different European regions beyond the metropolises. With a regional focus, NEOLAiA aims to create an open and inclusive educational and social environment that promotes equity at the university and in European society as a whole.
NEOLAiA was born as a strategic collaboration initiative of a group of universities from Spain, Germany, Czech Republic and Sweden in May 2019.
The formal establishment of the consortium stems from the previous cooperation that existed for several decades between the founding universities through collaborations in international mobility, research and teaching.
As a consortium of European Universities, the first proposal for an agreement to create the NEOLAiA Alliance was formalized in September 2019. The Alliance has subsequently grown with the active incorporation of full partners from Italy, Lithuania, Romania, France and Cyprus.In addition, in 2022 NEOLAiA received the highly coveted certificate by the European Commission of a High Quality Proposal in a Highly Competitive Evaluation Process with an overall score of 84/100. During these almost four years of sustained and constant academic collaboration, the alliance has launched numerous strategic institutional collaboration activities, covering areas such as:
Internationalisation and academic exchange are key for a cosmopolitan worldview that reacts against nationalistic and populist tensions. NEOLAiA will develop a series of mobility and multicultural initiatives that will expand on traditional exchange programmes and lead to a seamlessly integrated alliance of international universities.
Inclusive societies embrace diversity as a contribution to economic and social development. NEOLAiA will be shaped by principles of widening participation and inclusion, driven by the concept of equity in education and research. It will create standards, policies, training and certification on diversity & inclusion (D&I) and plurilingual education. In addition, a strong focus on the societal engagement for D&I through open events will benefit the intercultural awareness of its academic community and societies in the largely diverse populations of the NEOLAiA non-metropolitan regions.
Research and scientific output with real impact in regional development will be boosted with a smart specialization strategy based on existing regional research capacity and strengths as found on NEOALAiA’s needs analysis survey (bibliometric research, in section 1.1.4, also in the annex section) on specialisation areas that point to NEOLAiA’s 3 key pillars and the NEOLAiA Key Application Area of Global Health). NEOLAiA’s actions will apply digital access to research by mapping synergies and resources among partners to increase:
Universities play a key role in regional economic development by bridging education, research, knowledge transfer and economic output. NEOLAiA will benefit academic communities and society at large in non-metropolitan regions with new educational infrastructures that support the transfer of ideas to production, contributing to the regional and economic development of its partners.
Through its positive impact on sustainable connectivity and socio-economic development at a regional scale
Through its positive impact of D&I policies in European populations and underrepresented groups
Through its positive impact on cultural and social inclusiveness for a shared European citizenship against populistic tensions
One of NEOLAiA’s 3 key NEOLAiA Pillars (NP2) is focused on Diversity and Inclusion (D&I), a cross-sectional dimension that will be embedded in various activities throughout the whole alliance. This will require an active advisory role from this WP in enabling internal and societal awareness on topics of D&I such as best practices and barriers to participation, in particular by under-represented groups in the regions where the alliance is present. NEOLAiA’s vision for an inclusive European University starts at its campuses, permeating into its surrounding communities in a step-by-step approach aiming at:
With a view to its future in the framework of the European Universities Initiative (EUI), NEOLAiA will implement governance and management structures that respond to the growing interconnectedness of its partners aiming at:
Teaching is widely established as one of the three core missions of HEIs (Teaching, Research and Societal Engagement). Correspondingly, WP Teaching and Learning and its initiatives will operationalize this mission for NEOLAiA as a European University. To achieve a politically, economically and scientifically engaged community of European citizens who are fully able to participate in their societies and economies, NEOLAiA sees its role as an active contributor to the achievement of global educational goals such as:
a) The UN SDG4 “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”, as well as
b) Two of the European Council’s (EC) recommendations to a “European space of learning which benefits all learners, academics and other education staff who can move freely to study and work across the EU” and to “contribute to the vitality of [our] regions and communities, helping to overcome disadvantage and geographic disparities” (18.1.2022 COM (2022)17 final, pp. 1 and 8) “on building bridges for effective European higher education cooperation”.
By pursuing these global educational goals, the Teaching and Learning WP will thus aim at:
In pursuit of its ambition to transform European regions for an inclusive Europe, NEOLAiA will foster inclusive and value-adding mobility opportunities, expanding on traditional modes of academic exchange and internationalization through innovative blended and virtual formats as a fully inclusive, culturally diverse, integrated and transversal element that runs seamlessly through the whole academic experience, for students, researchers, teachers and university staff. The initiatives in this WP will aim specifically at:
Research is one of NEOLAiA’s three core missions as a European University (M1 Teaching, M2 Research, M3 Societal Engagement). Upon the mapping of NEOLAiA’s research strengths and their relation with the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we see our role not as a global leader in terms of high output number of scientific publications, but as an enabler of research with regional specialization. NEOLAiA will transform regional connectivity, by leveraging on regional research strengths and critical mass identified in the NEOLAiA bibliometric and specialization index analysis in section 1.1 and Objective 3 (with a proven track record output in research areas such as Global Health, Curbing Inequalities, Inclusion and Diversity and Digitalization Infrastructures, among others).
These regional research strengths associated with a Smart Regionalisation Strategy will allow for a strong focus on transfer opportunities that are truly relevant for companies and universities from the participating regions.
With this vision, NEOLAiA will aim at:
• Facilitating access to a comprehensive account of synergies across the NEOLAiA partners' research groups and centres in order to form new transnational research teams and projects, producing high-impact and meaningful research addressing societal challenges of regional relevance (Task 5.1).
• Fostering transnational research collaboration via the launch of the NEOLAiA Research Framework, outlining the principles for sharing research resources in an efficient, sustainable and quality-enhancing manner, aided by digitalization, to strengthen research quality and applicability (Task 5.1).
• Supporting research regional relevance and inclusion built on the combined strengths of NEOLAiA universities by establishing a detailed map of infrastructure and resources (e.g. technical equipment, databases, cohorts, staff, regional collaborative networks, and living/social/impact labs) that can be shared across NEOLAiA universities (Task 5.2).
• Creating expert support teams specialising in external research funding, academic career development and general research support for the benefit of regional engagement and the prevention of researcher brain-drain (Task 5.3).
• Providing enhanced quality and regional relevance of NEOLAiA research by offering targeted activities for Early Stage Researchers, leading to successful transnational networks and research projects through mobility and mentoring (Task 5.4).
• Constructing open digital platforms for co-creation of knowledge among stakeholders, resulting in, and based on, innovative regionally relevant and high-impact research linked to societal needs (NEOLAiA Living Lab Programme, and WP OpenScience) (Task 5.5).
NEOLAiA’s third mission towards Societal Engagement is intrinsically connected with its bridging role between academia, regional economic participation and social development via local entrepreneurial ecosystems. This will be achieved by supporting aspiring entrepreneurs in our regions and helping them cope with a broad range of obstacles to economic inclusion. Defining the common core values and strategy for regionally integrated entrepreneurship specialization will be key for a SMART regional economic growth and employability strategy. With this vision, this WP will aim at:
A truly plurilingual and intercultural educational ecosystem is key for an inclusive and diverse EEA and EUI. In pursuit of the European values for a linguistically and culturally equitable education, the NEOLAiA Alliance has set forth this WP with a set of objectives aiming at a sustainable practice and continuous improvement of the longstanding European language recommendations by the Council of Europe since the late 1990s, recently reiterated in Recommendation CM/Rec(2022)1 (February 2nd, 2022) as a set of “policy guidelines and frameworks that provide conceptual and practical support for plurilingual and intercultural education for democratic citizenship”. In parallel, NEOLAiA’s regional connectivity mission means that this WP’s objectives will also pursue the two items of “language barriers” and “cultural differences”, as key alliance-specific barriers, identified as barriers that stand out above other barriers to inclusion in the NEOLAiA regional survey (the report that served as basis for identifying the NEOLAiA Diversity & Inclusion pillar targets) by:
References and frameworks underpinning the tasks proposed in this WP include:
Research is one of NEOLAiA’s 3 core missions as a HEI and as a European University. This WP on Open Science will contribute to sustain research activities as a key HEI mission, in conjunction with WP5 – Research Excellence and Regional Impact.
It will do so by adopting a set of policies and technological infrastructure to ensure a collaborative knowledge- sharing research ecosystem, as well as an inclusive and equitable science citizenship participation.
It will use principles such as the FAIR framework and will set in motion the European Commission’s 2030 Digital Compass vision for science citizenship with the aim of:
Our alliance envisions Digital Transformation as one of the 3 key NEOLAiA Pillars (NPs) - NP1 Digital Transformation, NP2 Diversity and Inclusion and NP3 Enhanced Mobility. We therefore see NEOLAiA as having an active role as an enabler of advanced digital skills for inclusion, widening the participation and usage of digital technologies by society at large and in particular by under-represented groups in the regions where the alliance is present (see WP3 on under-represented groups), facilitating lifelong learning education that prepares the workforce for the ever-changing market demands. This WP will thus aim at:
NEOLAiA’s sustainability as a European University relies in great part on the quality of its projects and activities, as well as on the continuous assessment of its outputs and collaborations. It is key to support the alliance’s mission through time beyond EU funding by assuring that all stakeholders (internal and eternal) are kept informed and involved in all activities through inclusive means of dissemination and participation within the alliance and towards the general public. For this purpose it will aim at:
Lead: Šiauliai State University of Applied Sciences (Lithuania)