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Global Partnerships

Working Group

Chair: Sarah-Marleen Dannenberg

Sarah-Marleen Dannenberg is Regional Offices & DWIH Manager at the International Affairs Division of University of Cologne (UoC). She studied International Information Management with focus on Intercultural Communication at the University of Hildesheim and holds an M.Phil. in Linguistics from Trinity College Dublin. She went to California State University, Northridge and Motril, Spain for research stays. When still a student, she was an active member of the ESN network and Vice President of ESN Germany from 2013 to 2014.
 

Vice-Chair: Nils Gunnar Songstad

Nils Gunnar Songstad is administrative leader of Global challenges, one of the strategic prioritized areas of University of Bergen, Norway. The unit holds an annual PhD research school, established in 2008, with participants from all over the world. He holds a PhD in health systems research, and his background is in social anthropology and political science. He has extensive work experience in East Africa through development, research and research administration. His main focus is to promote collaboration between scientific disciplines in addressing global challenges, and to stimulate collaboration with the Global South based on mutual responsibilities.

Focus of Working Group

The global social responsibility of universities requires their active engagement with global cooperation issues and challenges. The Coimbra Group aims at increasing such engagements to create an effective response to major cooperation challenges and a fruitful relation with the main global partnership and development agencies, in primis the European Union (EU).

The academic world plays an important role as promoter of a broad and solid approach to global cooperation, based on the issues of capacity strengthening, the promotion of a global citizenship education and the implementation of a participative approach to research and for global partnerships.

The activities of the Global Partnerships Working Group align with global and European policies in the sense that they refer to actual challenges in global partnerships, especially concerning the SDGs and their implementation in decolonization, education, and migration.

Priorities for 2024 – 2026

  • Implementation of joint training sessions and education programmes (e.g., summer / winter schools) to contribute to the improvements of institutional capacities; Implementation of joint training sessions and education programmes in the framework of Erasmus+ projects.
  • Sharing knowledge and experiences on research for cooperation models and evaluation, including a critical review of cooperation with low-income countries and the actions of the main international donors.
  • Investigation on the role of universities as agents of global cooperation at the country or regional level, including the co-designing of experiences of higher education fostering ownership and human and institutional capacity strengthening.
  • Development of a European language policy in the context of global partnerships for education and modern languages.

Recent highlights

  • CG Master programme in Peace & Conflict Studies (CGMIPCS): this initiative in the field of Peace & Conflict Studies offers a scientific approach to analyse violent and non-violent behaviours in order to better understand political conflict situations.
  • Students are given the possibility to move between the participating universities with the support of the Erasmus+ programme (KA131) to achieve specialist knowledge, as well as to apperceive different approaches. They can, thus, explore different cultural backgrounds already during their university studies. CG universities taking part in the initiative also build on their own links with partner universities in different regions of the world and countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia. This opens diverse possibilities for students for undertaking their internships and thesis research. The Universities of Aarhus, Coimbra, Galway, Granada, Groningen, Jena, Poitiers, and Vilnius participate in the study programme.
  • The CGMIPCS project was launched in September 2021 with the organization of the network’s first international conference at the University of Poitiers: “After the crisis: Justice, Institutions, Media. Which memory(s) of the conflict in the contemporary world?”.
  • In March 2023, the 1st Blended Intensive Programme (BIP) on “Memory Studies: Peace, Conflict and Transformation” was organized at the University of Vilnius (coordinator), in cooperation with the Universities of Jena and Granada.
  • In October 2023, the third CGMIPCS Network conference took place at the University of Coimbra. The topic was “Peace, Imperialism and Postcolonialism”. In March 2024, a CGMIPCS-seminar on “Traumata and Intentional Memory: Reconciliation Resources for our European Union” was hosted by the University of Jena.
  • International Conference “European Universities‘ Collaboration with China: Opportunities and Risks for Academic Exchange”: this conference was organized by the University of Würzburg in collaboration with other CG members, on 29 February-1 March  2024. It debated how to better understand our Chinese partners and how to fruitfully cooperate in a changing world and research landscape.
  • The main panels covered the following sub-topics:
  • Developments of EU-China relations,
    • Developments in science diplomacy,
    • National strategies to deal with Chinese HEIs
    • CG Universities’ best practices in collaborating with China.
  • The conference was very well received, and follow-up actions are planned. 

Ongoing/forthcoming activities

  • The third “International Summer School on European Multilingualism” will take place at the University of Niš (Serbia) from 23 to 29 June 2024.
  • With the support of CG universities, as well as the Erasmus+ KA131 action, teachers from the University of Coimbra, Graz, Jena, Poitiers (project coordinator) and Salamanca, all CG members, will propose, in collaboration with the teachers from the University of Niš an intensive short programme on European Multilingualism and Cultural Mediation Studies.
  • The aim is to share innovative approaches to teaching and learning languages. The intensive short programme offers courses of translation and language application in several small groups: Bulgarian, English, German, French, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. In addition, Language Discovering Workshops enables all participants to learn about the Less Widely Used and Lesser Taught languages (LWULT) and their important role in keeping language diversity and the world’s multilingual heritage. The Summer School two LWULT Workshops: Modern Greek, Serbian and Turkish.
  • Joint session in cooperation with the Heritage and Latin America Working Groups on the decolonization of universities. The session will be held at the CG Annual Conference in Turku, June 2024. It is planned to organize an event at a larger scale in 2025.
  • Planned cooperation with the University of Bristol on the “Africa Charter for Transformative Research Collaborations”. The Charter demands more equitable and more inclusive research relationships with higher education institutions in Africa. It was endorsed by the Coimbra Group, the African Union, the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA), and other essential stakeholders. In addition to a conference planned in Brussels in the autumn 2024, the GP WG will organize several events in order to promote and disseminate knowledge on the Charter.
  • Collaboration with The China Competence Centre of the University of Würzburg (CCCUW) on developing a policy brief as a follow-up to the international conference “European universities‘ collaboration with China: opportunities and risks for academic exchange”.

Contact person at the CG Office: Catarina Moleiro (moleiro@coimbra-group.eu)