The education landscape across Europe is changing. At the 2017 Gothenburg Summit, EU leaders outlined a vision for education and culture. In its December 2017 Conclusions, the European Council called on Member States, the Council and the Commission to take forward a number of initiatives, including: '…strengthening strategic partnerships across the EU between higher education institutions and encouraging the emergence by 2024 of some twenty 'European Universities', consisting in bottom-up networks of universities across the EU which will enable students to obtain a degree by combining studies in several EU countries and contribute to the international competitiveness of European universities' (European Commission, 2020).

In that sense, the European University Association (EUA), the largest and most comprehensive organization representing universities in Europe with more than 800 member universities in 48 European countries and 33 national university associations, in early 2020 EUA conducted a survey to map the state of play of universities’ international engagement, explore in particular the topic of international strategic institutional partnerships and collect views about the European Universities Initiative (Claeys-Kulik et al., 2020).

Results supported Council Conclusions on the European Universities to achieve: “…the ambitious vision of an innovative, globally competitive and attractive European Education Area and European Research Area, in full synergy with the European Higher Education Area, by helping to boost the excellence dimension of higher education, research and innovation, while promoting gender equality, inclusiveness, and equity, allowing for seamless and ambitious transnational cooperation between higher education institutions in Europe, and inspiring the transformation of higher education.”

European Universities are denominated as transnational alliances that will become the universities of the future, promoting European values and identity, and revolutionising the quality and competitiveness of European higher education.

In order to achieve this major step forward, the initiative is offering opportunities to support diverse cooperation models for European Universities through the Erasmus+ calls for proposals.

Europe hosts a significant diversity of framework conditions, regulations, decision-making and implementation processes that govern the way in which Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) operate. However, the development of institutional governance models in many systems has only revolved around the question of different groups’ participation in governing bodies and the appointment of external representatives, with a specific focus on who is responsible for such appointments. The question of competencies and links to institutional transformation processes has not been given particular attention and its impact on students and academic staff.

The alliances include partners from all types of higher education institution and cover a broad geographic scope across Europe are based upon a co-envisioned long-term strategy focused on sustainability, excellence and European values offer student-centred curricula jointly delivered across inter-university campuses, where diverse student bodies can build their own programmes and experience mobility at all levels of study adopt a challenge-based approach according to which students, academics and external partners can cooperate in inter-disciplinary teams to tackle the biggest issues facing Europe today.

The 41 European Universities alliances selected under the first two calls for proposals in 2019 and 2020 are testing diverse models of the concept of European Universities and examine its potential to transform higher education. The European Universities Initiative is being fully rolled out and scaled up under the Erasmus+ programme 2021-2027.

Therefore, the objective is to analyze in a pilot study the impact of FORTHEM project (as one of the European University Alliance) on students and academic staff from a local perspective at the University of Valencia (Spain).

A leading principle of FORTHEM (Fostering Outreach within European Regions, Transnational Higher Education and Mobility) Alliance is to develop a Transnational Higher Education Strategy across seven European universities. At the core of our network is the Weimar Triangle (Dijon, Mainz, Opole), reaches the Scandinavian and Baltic region (Jyväskylä, Riga) as well as the Iberian Peninsula (Valencia) and finally also connects the south of Europe (Palermo). To reach this goal, one of the main tasks is to establish new types of multidisciplinary expert networks called “FORTHEM Labs” that will serve as innovative interfaces between education, research and innovation. Going beyond the scope of traditional Erasmus+ bilateral cooperation, Labs can be understood as a network of expert networks, or in other words, a valuable resource and asset to mobilize knowledge and experience from Alliance member universities for shared goals. That is, Labs are built on shared areas of expertise and complementary strengths of the Alliance member universities and seek best practices and research-based solutions to organisation-specific, regional or European challenges. In the context of severe political, economic and social consequences of global challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic, sharing best practices and developing new innovative solutions are vital. ‘Living Labs’ are composed of researchers, students and university-external stakeholders (associated partners) from different fields. Fostering new forms of collaboration between academics, students and associated partners, Labs offer new opportunities for multi-faceted and equal dialogue. However, the project is open to all students and researchers from the institution. Therefore, the pilot study pretends to analyze the following dimensions, regardless the lab actions: • Creating diverse networks and synergies between academics, students and external actors. • Knowledge about FORTHEM project and activities. • Participation in FORTHEM activities (Mobility, Labs, etc.,). • Combining activities to students’ own courses, providing them with ECTS compensation • New opportunities for academic publications (e.g. journal special issues, books, etc.), encouraging academic staff to participate • Labs’ teams have been developing joint funding applications for competitive external funding (e.g. Horizon Europe, CHANSE…) • Dissemination FORTHEM results. • The engagement of associated partners in outputs. The survey has been administrated among students and academics at the University of Valencia.

Expected results are related to a wider impact of the FORTHEM activities as part of a European Alliance University. FORTHEM Alliance aims to bring together a new generation of creative Europeans able to cooperate across languages, borders and disciplines to address societal challenges and skills shortages faced in Europe. Each university comes from a diverse country, has distinct cultural heritages and languages, educational and administrative systems, economic and political realities, and varying stances regarding the European Union. The FORTHEM model will facilitate innovativeness in education and a close linkage between education, research and innovation in the best possible way. As final goal, we attempt to educate open-minded European citizens committed to our common democratic values, together solving the obstacles for seamless student and staff mobility and providing students with 21st century skills such as problem-solving, critical thinking, creativity, flexibility, self-direction and good communication skills because we believe in intercultural dialogue and in Europe’s multiculturalism and multilingualism.

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