The TEFCE Toolbox was presented at a session on university social responsibility

From29th November - 1st December 2021, TEFCE coordinator Thomas Farnell (IDE) participated as a panelist at a four-day conference organised by the Unite! European University Alliance entitled, 'Paving the way for European Higher Education in2030', hosted by the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC).

Thomas participated in the session 'University social responsibility: facing current challenges for a new future', which was chaired by Gemma Fargas (Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya) and Stephan Östlund (KTH Royal Institute of Technology). The session featured a presentation by Jude Fransmann (Open University research fellow and co-convenor of the Rethinking Research Collaborative) on participative research and a presentation by Thomas Farnellon the TEFCE Toolbox for community engagement in higher education. The session also featured videos of good practices from UNITE! Partner universities.

The conclusions of the ensuing discussion was that community engagement has a key place in the future of European universities, including in the UNITE! Alliance, and in other alliances including those in STEM fields. Another conclusion was that rather than ‘reaching out’, universities need to ‘bring communities in’, and that frameworks such as the TEFCE Toolbox can help this process.

A video of the session is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VffeaSsU4os.

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