From 1 to 4 April 2025, representatives from the ENLIGHT universities of Bern, Galway, Ghent, Göttingen, and Groningen took part in the IPORA event held in Bordeaux, France.
IPORA is an international transdisciplinary research network, funded in 2023, between four main universities: Abidjan (Ivory Coast), Addis-Adeba (Ethiopia), Bordeaux (France) and Rabat (Morocco).
ENLIGHT brings together academics, researchers and prominent cultural agents to discuss and find new cooperation paths across the alliance. The third edition of the ENLIGHT European Dialogue focused on Co-creation of knowledge together with the Cultural & Creative sectors and was hosted by the University of the Basque Country on 21-22 May 2025.
The ENLIGHT Blended Intensive Programme (BIP), Connecting Cultures Across Europe, is an established path of collaboration among ENLIGHT partners. This course is holding its onsite week during the week of 12-19 May 2025 in Vitoria-Gasteiz, with a multidisciplinary team of lecturers from four ENLIGHT institutional partners.
The second edition of this course focuses on sustainability, travel, translation and migration-related societal challenges that the students try to address from a socio-cultural perspective. The course, co-organised with local agents, is taught by academics from four ENLIGHT universities and includes Master and PhD level learners from nine partners of the alliance.
If you are passionate about AI and healthcare and have an entrepreneurial spirit, you are welcome to the AIProHealth Summer School, which offers an intensive learning experience for students, postdocs, junior specialists, and startup employees in AI, medicine, and business who focus on innovation in medical technology.
At the event you will learn about AI's technical, ethical, and legal aspects in healthcare and gain entrepreneurial experience in bringing AI solutions to the healthcare market.
Anette-Mai Pirk-Birk, student representative of ENLIGHT and former Vice President of the University of Tartu’s Student Union, believes in the transformative power of collaboration. From organizing student activities to participating in high-level governance, she has helped bridge perspectives across disciplines and borders. In this interview, she reflects on her experience with ENLIGHT, the lessons learned through international cooperation, and why she believes student voices are essential in reimagining education across Europe.
Read the full interview here.
On April 30, 2025, the Public Defender of Rights, JUDr. Róbert Dobrovodský, PhD., LL.M. (Tübingen), gave a lecture as part of the international Blended Intensive Programme (BIP) titled Migration in Global & Local Context, held at the Faculty of Arts, Comenius University in Bratislava. His lecture was also part of the university’s Regional Academy platform.
Join the 9th ENLIGHT & Arqus Alliance Open Science Ambassador Webinar featuring Hildrun Walter (University of Graz) on 19th May 2025 from 10:00 - 11:30 AM (CET). This session will explore the vital role of science communication in today’s society and how Open Science practices can help strengthen trust in research—especially in times of global crises like the pandemic and climate change. Find out more and register here.
The application for the University of Groningen summer schools has opened! These interdisciplinary, research driven programmes are an opportunity to learn more about your own field or to broaden your knowledge, work on important questions and gain inspiration for your studies and/or research!
Femke De Backere, associate professor at Ghent University and senior scientist at imec, blends software engineering with impactful healthcare research. Through ENLIGHT, she co-teaches the interdisciplinary summer school Innovation Game: Applying Serious Game Design in Health Care at Uppsala University. In this interview, she shares how ENLIGHT has helped her build international collaborations and push the boundaries of education and research in personalized, serious games. Read the full interview here.
Looking for an inspiring way to spend your summer? Join UniTartu Summer School 2025 from 28 July to 8 August in the vibrant and historic city of Tartu, Estonia! Applications are open until 30 April 2025.
Join University of Galway, University of Groningen/UMCG and Uppsala University on April 8th for a dynamic pan-European forum exploring Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) in research. This event brings together distinguished speakers from Sweden, the Netherlands, and Ireland who will share insights from case studies, highlighting both the commonalities and differences in PPI practices across diverse European contexts. There will be opportunities to hear perspectives from other ENLIGHT colleagues across Europe.
To stimulate and support the bottom-up cooperation between the ENLIGHT university communities, ENLIGHT launched a first set of calls for joint initiatives in April 2024. A second set of calls is launched in April 2025.
Each call targets joint proposals for specific types of actions involving at least three ENLIGHT instutions.
