As yet, not everyone has caught up with the exciting and ambitious project that Circle U actually is. It's about creating a European campus where research-strong European universities team up to extract the best from each other’s profile and offer an even richer set of education programmes to students. This enhances the mobility of both students and staff and gives them incentives for the joint development of teaching and research.
The students will eventually be part of a seamless European campus, including joint student cards, joint European degrees and even greater access to courses. Staff can co-create new courses, programmes and joint degrees more easily, and also share experience and find new opportunities for research collaboration and projects. To achieve all this, there are also funds and support schemes for everyone willing to commit and make a contribution.
The grand overall plans
It would be great to hear from anyone of you with ideas or a wish to contribute to some of the Circle U initiatives. Among other things, we will develop 15 new courses in collaboration with the other universities. Five of these courses will be in the field of global health.
A new master's programme in “Public Governance” is also underway. It will be interdisciplinary and aimed at the three designated disciplines: global health, climate and democracy. The new master’s programme provides a great opportunity for our staff to contribute, in particular those with an interest in global health management, but also generic topics such as ethics or statistics.
Summer schools 2022
This summer, summer schools will be held in each of the three designated priority areas – global health, democracy and climate:
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Rethinking Global Health – Université Paris Cité : 4-8 July
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Evidence and Democracy in Times of Crisis – University of Oslo : 8 - 12 August
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Communicating Climate Science – Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin : 22 - 26 August
The first school is aimed at all PhD candidates and is highly relevant for our young researchers. The second school is relevant for master’s students who are concerned with knowledge management and management in crises, including students within health management, interdisciplinary health research and International Community Health. This school is held at UiO. The course builds on previous seminars we have held, including at UiO's annual festival, where we had over 300 listeners online as a panel discussed how to handle knowledge in times of crisis.
If you teach relevant students, or supervise PhD candidates, I would be grateful if you could inform them directly of this unique opportunity for the students. This experience can be very useful in building up international contacts for future research collaboration. Three summer schools are planned for next year, too, and we can help shape the content. Please contact me if you have any ideas and would like to contribute.
Circle U café
There are several opportunities this spring. Today, we held a seminar on sustainability in higher education. On 28 March, we will hold a Circle U Café at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library and online on how the quality of education can be improved by actively engaging students in research. I’m looking forward to that, and I hope to see many of our dedicated educators there. I plan to attend in person and there will certainly also be room for good conversations about opportunities for engagement in Circle U and initiatives related to this.
Research prize and seed funds
Circle U has announced an internal prize for interdisciplinary research projects in one of the three selected areas for Circle U (global health, democracy and climate), to be awarded annually to three nominees. The prize is open to all staff at the collaborating universities, regardless of nationality or age. Nominate now, before 10 May.
There is currently also an announcement of seed funding for innovative projects organised from the University of Paris. The idea is for students, teachers and external partners to work on issues. The deadline for applications is 6 May.