EERJ Moot: Europeanisation of Universities: Between Past and Future

Speakers: Kirsten Sivesind, Christian Ydesen

When: 00 SES 17 A / Friday, 21 August / 16:00 - 17:00

Where: Main Auditorium | Main building A | 2 Fl.

This year’s Moot engages with recent debates on the Europeanisation of higher education. It will open by introducing the journal’s new description, aims, and scope as a point of departure for reflecting more broadly on European education and educational research. It will then take as its starting point a special issue of the European Educational Research Journal (EERJ) published this year (Vol. 23, Issue 3). The discussion revisits how Europeanisation has historically shaped higher education through evolving policy frameworks, governance arrangements, and knowledge infrastructures, while highlighting tensions between national traditions and transnational coordination. Building on these perspectives, the roundtable turns to emerging developments, particularly the ongoing transformation of national qualifications frameworks and their relationship to the European Qualifications Framework for lifelong learning (EQF) (Cedefop, 2025). These developments position national qualifications frameworks as instruments for making qualifications and skills more visible, supporting more flexible learning pathways, and strengthening the cross-border recognition and portability of qualifications across Europe. At the same time, they raise important questions about institutional autonomy, disciplinary knowledge, and the purposes of higher education. By situating current reforms within a longer historical trajectory, the Moot invites critical reflection on how higher education institutions are being reconfigured through their research and educational programmes, between inherited legacies and future expectations.