EUTOPIA at the Third UNESCO World Higher Education Conference (WHEC 2022)

The UNESCO World Higher Education Conference (WHEC2022) gathered almost 2500 higher education stakeholders in Barcelona, Spain, from 18 to 22 May 2022, to reshape ideas and practices in higher education to ensure sustainable development for the planet and humanity. The event was conceptualized as a global conversation to define and prepare a roadmap for a new era of higher education.  According to UNESCO, “this roadmap, conceived as an open, living document, aims to respond to the challenges faced by humanity and the planet, with special attention to the global disruption created by the Covid-19. It looks at both the higher education systems (norms, policies, structures, stakeholders) and institutions (universities, specialized entities, networks).” The event served as a space to introduce new knowledge, innovative ideas creative alliances, and produced an enlarged and reinvigorated coalition of the global higher education community in favour of the future development and beyond.

EUTOPIA was privileged to be part of the prestigious conference along with the UNESCO French delegation. It opened a bigger room for EUTOPIA to introduce as a pioneer among the European University Initiative to the world and to express the relevance of the paradigm shift in the European Higher Education spectrum. The meet was a rare and valuable platform for the EUTOPIA higher management and representatives to talk about the alliance and its progress to a global audience in the first phase of its launching. Through these conversations the alliance also anticipates the further expansion of the EUTOPIA European University in a global map of academia.