UNIVERSITIES FUTURES

European Training Network which intends to train 15 new PhDs through 15 research projects all aimed at understanding and renewing the public orientation of universities and higher education. We feel that this is needed, and has been needed for a long time, but we also feel that now is the time when even the application reviewers in EU would share this idea.

The project seeks to understand and rethink the role and purpose of universities in the contemporary world so that they are more relevant for society and humanity than the current economic instrumentalist models. If successful, it would start in February 2018 and will engage 15 PhDs (divided between the universities KULeuven, Porto, Ljubljana, Bristol and Aarhus universities) together with other academics and societal actors. It is organised in three work packages which 1. Explore current experiments with new ways of doing research, education and engaging with the public that are going on both inside and outside universities, 2. Analyse the condition of possibility and constraint on changing universities and 3. Engage in action research in developing alternative forms of universities. The 15 PhDs will do each a research project, and we will have six workshops and one conference over the three year period. The aim is to build a community and a set of young scholars that can charge a reformulation of the public university and its societal compact.