Empowering the Margins of Europe for Regional and Global Engagement
Putting the margins at the heart of Europe!
EMERGE brings together nine universities, united by the conviction that by working together we can better serve our students, territories and communities.
Created in 2019 as a unique consortium of European higher education institutions, the group officially was accepted into the European University Initiative in 2024, with the project being launched in January 2025.
Partners
This Alliance today is coordinated by the University of Limerick.
The full list of partners includes:
- Rennes 2 University
- University of Limerick / Ollscoil Luimnigh /Ireland
- Université de Bretagne Sud (UBS) /France
- Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences /Norway
- Univerzita Majeta Bela / Banskej Bystrici /Slovakia
- Europa-Universität Flensburg /Germany
- Neapolis University Pafos /Cyprus
- Universidade da Coruña, Spain
- Democritus University of Thrace (DUTH), Greece
And also with Associated Partners:
Together, our institutions will be seeking to tackle the particular challenges of engaging with Europe and hope to create a European University.
OUR VISION
The priorities of the territories and communities we serve and the locations in which we operate define a clear and ambitious vision as a European University, closely aligned with European values.
EMERGE will empower our marginalised territories and communities to help build a more equitable,sustainable and prosperous Europe for all.
This vision, in turn, has important implications for each of our universities. It implies a shift in the way we conceive the relative importance of our missions and in particular of the so-called “third mission” of universities. It requires a transition towards a more socially and environmentally conscious approach to teaching and research.
The “third mission”, encapsulating a wide range of activities from technology transfer to societal outreach, is usually conceptualised as a consequence of the first two: research and education enable universities to fulfil their third mission. However, such an approach tends to reinforce classical hierarchical models in which research trends are defined by research intensive universities in major metropolitan centres and their impact is meant to slowly trickle down towards marginal 3 communities and territories.
This is why EMERGE proposes a radical shift, which reverses the classical order of three university missions.
Societal engagement is at the heart of our identity, it is the First Mission of EMERGE. Although thethree missions constantly interact and shape each other, it is our societal and territorial mission that drives our approach in research and education and defines the way we operate as universities.
About the European Universities Initiative
The European Universities Initiative (EUI) is a program created by the European Commission after the 2017 Gothenburg Summit, in which EU leaders outlined a vision for education and culture. The European Council called on Member States, the Council and the Commission to take forward a number of initiatives, including:
"…strengthening strategic partnerships across the EU between higher education institutions and encouraging the emergence by 2024 of some twenty 'European Universities', consisting in bottom-up networks of universities across the EU which will enable students to obtain a degree by combining studies in several EU countries and contribute to the international competitiveness of European universities'".
The EUI is today one of the flagship initiatives of the EU’s ambitions to build a European Education Area. The aim of creating these transnational alliances is to build the universities of the future, promoting European values and identity, and revolutionizing the quality and competitiveness of European higher education.
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To find out more about the EUI program, please go here.
To find out more about the EMERGE consortium and the different projects that the partner universities already share, please contact us at emerge [at] univ-rennes2.fr (emerge[at]univ-rennes2[dot]fr).
