Open to the world

Philosophy

EUTOPIA is, at its heart, a European project, but our reach and ambition spread beyond Europe. The Open to the World strand of work develops the international, and not just the European dimension of EUTOPIA through two parallel fields of activity.

Firstly, EUTOPIA will develop its local internationalism by focusing on

• the fundamental nurturing and collaborative development of a curriculum and an educational commitment determined to create a truly international graduate capability and aspiration in each university;
• the development of an ever more closely connected and self-reinforcing international community of faculty within and across universities.

Secondly, this local internationalism will complement global internationalism. This will enact the process of:

• learning from and contributing to the existing non-European partnerships and operations of each EUTOPIA member;
• developing this dynamic ring of coordinated global activity and enquiry in order to EUTOPIA’s capability and reach.

Activities

Activities developed under the umbrella of local internationalism comprise the production of a report detailing policies and practices related to internationalization at home and the co-creation of templates for research-led modules on internationally significant subjects. The third strand of local internationalism involves the development of actions that will be used to further support student international practice. This includes:

• The EUTOPIA Undergraduate Research Scholarship Scheme, which each year will grant 12 alliance students a bursary of €1500 to carry out a piece of research abroad.
• The International Conference for Undergraduate Research, an online, real-time presentation of students’ research to the whole of their international community, challenges students to rethink their work in an international context.
• The EUTOPIA Certificate of Internationalisation, encourages, recognizes, and rewards students’ international learning.

In the global internationalism strand, the EUTOPIA alliance will share experiences of building mature strategic partnerships with global (non-European) partners through a series of virtual workshops and a final conference. Along with sharing experience and expertise and beginning to establish relationships between the EUTOPIA alliance and the global partners, a case study analysis will be produced to disseminate this learning to an external audience. In addition, the annual BeEUTOPIAn student conference will present and debate the current position and potential scenarios concerning a key social-scientific problem (see feedback from the involved students here.)