Education prepares students for their future life in society. Higher education not only prepares students for an academic professional life but also to participate in society as academic and as citizen. Academics like other citizens can contribute to society in different ways; they can fulfil a different role as intellectual. For example in a neo-liberal way in which own success, competition and a market orientation are dominant, or in a more transformative way in which enhancing equal opportunities, social cohesion and democracy dominate.

In a project called RIAIPE3, funded by the EU-Alfa programme, 22 universities from 13 countries in Central and Latin America and 8 universities from 6 European countries have inquired the role of universities in these social and political issues. The researchers have analysed in the different countries educational policy, educational practices and they have tried to develop more transformative practices. Global developments are refractioned in the different countries (Goodson & Rudd, in press). And these developments can show contradictions: contradictions that give possibilities for more transformative educational practices.

The focus in the just finished 3-year project was on higher education. Issues were for example: how can the participation of women, migrants and indigenous people be enlarged and how can education help students in becoming more oriented to contributing to social justice and democracy in their society and a global world.

In this symposium we want to present some of the outcomes of this project. Antonio Teodoro and Manuela Guilherme of the University of Lusofona Lisbon, who were coordinating the RAIPE3 project, will present some of the initiatives that have been developed in the RIAPE3 project (see Teodoro & Guilherme, in press). José Beltrán of the University of Valencia and Alejandra Montané of the University of Barcelona will present central concepts used in the project (see Beltran & Teodoro in press).

In the third paper Wiel Veugelers and Isolde de Groot of the University of Humanistic Studies Utrecht and Sylvia Llomovatte and Judith Naidorf of the University of Buenos Aires will present an analysis of the type of citizenship higher education in each country stimulates and how the practice of citizenship education relates to the developments and educational policy of different countries.

The three papers presents a dialogic analysis between academics from universities in Latin America and Europe RIAIPE3 participants as it shapes a "common place" where good practices in an international context can be situated. The symposium will present results from the RIAPE3 project and will put forward a vision for the future collaboration between European and Latin American higher education institutions and respective researchers.