SPACE webinar: making community-engaged practices sustainable in higher education

A SPACE project webinar focusing on leaderships perspectives on institutionalising community engagement will take place on Thursday, 4 December 2025 at 13:30 CET.

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.

These practices show how universities can connect education and research more closely with real societal challenges. However, much of this work still depends on the motivation and commitment of individual academics and professional staff. For community engagement to become more sustainable, universities need institutional structures, policies, resources, leadership and recognition mechanisms that can support these practices over time.

Organised as a fast one-hour session, the SPACE webinar will explore how community-engaged practices can become more embedded and sustainable across higher education institutions. Participants will gain insight into policies, funding opportunities and institutional structures that support the long-term development of community engagement in higher education.

The webinar will feature a panel discussion bringing together experienced university leaders and experts:

Prof. Snježana Prijić-Samaržija, PhD, former Rector, University of Rijeka, Croatia

Dr. Silvia Llach, former Vice-Rector, University of Girona, Spain

Dr. Martin Galvin, Head of Research Culture, Engagement and Impact, University College Cork, Ireland

The webinar is organised within the Erasmus+ project SPACE: Supporting Professionals and Academics for Community Engagement.

VUB education conference 2026 amplifies the impact of the SPACE project

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.

European university alliances advancing community engagement

Three European university alliances — EMERGE, EUNICoast and YUFE — are actively working with tools and approaches developed through the community-engagement.eu platform to strengthen their community engagement strategies.

New UNESCO framework names community engagement as core mission of 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.

EngageComp: making student civic engagement competences visible

The new EngageComp framework responds to this challenge by offering a structured way to identify and recognise the competences students acquire through civic engagement. Developed within the Erasmus+ EngageAll project, the framework is designed as a practical resource for educators, higher education institutions, civic partners and students themselves.

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