HED talk on community engagement at UNESCO HE conference

On 26 May 2026, Vrije Universiteit Brussel welcomed more than 200 academics, educational support staff, and university leaders to its annual Education Conference. For the Erasmus+ SPACE project, the event served as a significant local multiplier event — an opportunity to share curriculum redesign experiences with a large institutional audience and to stimulate broader dialogue about the future of community-engaged higher education. 

Community engagement in higher education is gaining growing recognition at both policy and institutional levels. A major milestone came with UNESCO’s 2026 roadmap Transforming Higher Education, which explicitly places community engagement alongside teaching and research as a way for higher education institutions to respond to major societal challenges. 

Community-engaged teaching, learning and research are taking place in universities across Europe. Academics and students are working with external partners through service-learning, challenge-based learning, collaborative research, citizen science, patient and public involvement, and many other forms of engagement.