On 9 and 10 December 2025, the annual conference ‘European University Networks (EUN) – National Initiative’ took place in Bonn. All German universities that are members of a European University Alliance were invited to participate in the conference with one member of the project staff and one student. The UG was represented by Student Vice-Rector Lukas Voigt, who is also the UG Student Ambassador for KreativEU, and the project coordinator at the UG, Dorthe G. A. Hartmann.
As the student body was represented by over forty participants at the conference, all EUN forums and workshops of the Barcamp took place with a substantial number of students, which led to an intensive and fruitful exchange between students and project managers. It became clear that students want to help shape the university alliances as equal partners and contribute valuable ideas.
During the Barcamp on the second day, both the student vice-rector and the UG project coordinator raised their own questions. Lukas Voigt raised the question of how researchers and teachers can be won over for our European university alliances. His own attitude was clear and was generally shared in the workshop: "Lecturers should not primarily evaluate internationalisation based on the personal added value they themselves derive from it. It is much more important to recognise the enormous opportunities they open up for their young scientists when European cooperation can be experienced directly in the lecture hall. Without committed lecturers who visibly and convincingly commit to the European idea, students are denied intercultural exchange – and this is precisely where we are wasting enormous potential for the future of science", according to the student vice-rector.
Dorthe G. A. Hartmann raised the question of how virtual mobility could be made attractive to students and looked forward to hearing from students about the criteria that make virtual mobility offers attractive to them, as well as examples of good practice that project managers from their alliances would report on. It became clear that students consider credit transfer to their actual degree programme to be important, as well as interdisciplinarity in the treatment of topics and interactivity in the self-study phase. Ideally, virtual mobility would end with a short face-to-face meeting with the participants. Successful examples of good practice included lecture series and alliance- or topic-specific additional certificates, the latter in cases where credit towards the actual degree programme is not possible.
The Vice-Rector for Student Affairs and the UG project coordinator gave a very positive assessment and brought many good ideas for KreativEU from Bonn back to Greifswald. They would like to thank the DAAD for making this valuable exchange possible.
KreativEU at the DAAD-EUN Annual Conference 2025
