A summit discusses proposals for increasingly sustainable international mobility between universities

News | International | Sustainability
(04/02/2025)
People in charge of managing the international mobility from different European universities are taking part, from 4 to 6 February, in the Student Mobility Summit “More mobility, less carbon footprint”, which is taking place in the Historic Building of the University of Barcelona. The meeting focuses on the challenge of making sustainability and internationalization compatible.
News | International | Sustainability
04/02/2025
People in charge of managing the international mobility from different European universities are taking part, from 4 to 6 February, in the Student Mobility Summit “More mobility, less carbon footprint”, which is taking place in the Historic Building of the University of Barcelona. The meeting focuses on the challenge of making sustainability and internationalization compatible.
The rector of the UB, Joan Guàrdia, opened the sessions with a speech in which he stated “the importance of university mobility as the best element for the future of the university in Europe”, and told the attendees to achieve “the challenge of strengthening this network of knowledge, with the aim of maintaining the identity of the European project”. This was followed by a video with a message from the Nela Riehl, German member of the European Parlamient (Group of the Greens), and a speech by João Bacelar, executive director of the European University Foundation (EUF).

Throughout the conferences and round tables, participants were able to share different points of view on how to put the guidelines for sustainable mobility into practice, learn first-hand about the initiatives of several institutions in this regard and access different useful. The programme included hackathons, as well as workshops and training sessions. Among the participants were also representatives from the Erasmus Student Network (ESN), national Erasmus agencies and other international higher education networks.

The summit is organised by the UB’s Office of the Vice-Rector’s for Internationalization Policy, as part of the University Internationalisation Hub initiative, created in 2020 by the UB and the EUF to improve the internationalisation of universities. The EUF is a network of European universities that, for twenty years, has been working to modernise higher education in Europe — with special emphasis on mobility — and has become a benchmark for European Union policy in this area.