Promotion of Inclusion and Equal Societies

The EUTOPIA Inclusion Action is an innovative and challenge-driven initiative that includes the mission to promote and ensure that higher education is inclusive and accessible to all students.

Read the EUTOPIA Inclusion Manifesto
Read the EUTOPIA Inclusion Framework
Read about EUTOPIA’s work with the Western Balkans

Implementing principles of inclusion, openness, equality, and diversity requires higher education institutions to move beyond traditional exchange approaches and to integrate well-coordinated practices and programmes that are explicitly and genuinely designed to support two key goals: 

• foster the inclusion of all, regardless of gender, socioeconomic status, race, ethnicity, regional affiliation, migration background, capability, sexual orientation, transgender identity, or expression; 
• attend to the relationship between ideal inclusivity agendas on the one hand and real student-body balance and financial inequality issues on the other hand.

This action's particularity is conceptualising inclusive practices while these are being implemented. Our basic premise is that people who have experienced exclusion know the situation best and are thus the best partners in planning inclusive policies and practices. By inviting students from disadvantaged groups to share their experiences and participate in activities, we demonstrate what inclusion is—giving space to underprivileged individuals, hearing them, and showing that good planning comes from the bottom up and not the other way around. Inclusive higher education contributes to individual development and well-being and increases the educational opportunities of individuals from disadvantaged groups and less developed regions. It also drives convergence upwards in higher education itself, thus creating a dynamic virtuous spiral. All students thereby reap the advantages of a more inclusive higher education set of policies and practices at local, regional and international levels of improvement. They are empowered via this student-centred mission. At the same time, the potentiality and plurality of Europe’s educational regions are championed, embodied and enhanced to socioeconomic and participatory ends as well as educational ones. Besides their participation in the ongoing issues of quality, progress and competitiveness, inclusive higher education institutions can act as direct role models for the broader society and help the transformative development of social justice and inclusivity. 

The project’s main principle is to provide equal learning opportunities for all groups of students, especially those disadvantaged because of their sex, race, ethnicity, immigrant background, economic status, disability, and so on. To this end, the project seeks to achieve two goals: develop recommendations and initiatives promoting equality and inclusion for disadvantaged groups, and jointly build expertise on how the European principles of openness and inclusion could be applied to all European regions, including the Western Balkans, especially in connection with education. With few exceptions, the universities in this region can include structurally disadvantaged students in international academic activities based on their ability to secure international research funding.

Key Principles

As part of the EUTOPIA pilot project, the action of promoting inclusion and equal societies will contribute to the following:

• a shared definition of disadvantage.
• developing recommendations and initiatives for the inclusion of disadvantaged groups. 
• designing strategies and methods of education for the inclusion of the Western Balkans.
• creating a joint research programme focusing on issues concerning the Western Balkans. 
• raising awareness of and providing information on best practices and celebrating diversity by holding a “Diversity Day ”.

The implementation of this action within the EUTOPIA pilot project proves that inclusion is not just a buzzword in today’s European social or university policies, but that such participation can exist and facilitate changes for disadvantaged students. By ensuring inclusion and participation, we can create a university of the future open to everyone.

An Expert Seminar on Inclusion

A seminar Bridging the Gap: Designing Higher Education Policies through Inclusion Narratives, intends to bring in “expert by experience” voices (students and external stakeholders, including other alliances and a member of the European Parliament), which narratives are important to understand the shared meaning of disadvantage, develop recommendations and initiatives, design strategies, methods, research programmes, and raise awareness of diversity. With their help, EUTOPIA aims to become best equipped to sharpen concrete engagement, structural modelling, and real-life benefits.

The seminar is scheduled foe the 17th of June 2022, for the whole day, at Ix Campus in Saint-Germain-en-Laye (34 Rue de la Croix de Fer, 78100, Saint-Germain-en-Laye)

• NOTA BENE: the seminar is on registration only. Registrations closed the 8 June 2022.

EUTOPIA has been working on Inclusion from the very beginning of its existence. Rewind the time, and screen (again) our Seminar on Digital Inclusion in 2020.