The EU commission has allocated €60 million to fund 12 projects to the tune of €5 million each. We expect tough competition but also believe our alliance is putting together a compelling vision centred around the third mission of higher education (see definition below). I am very grateful for all the work colleagues across Schools and professional services have put towards supporting this application.

We will submit the application next week and the results will be revealed in July. At the time of writing, BREXIT does not affect our application or participation in this project. I will circulate more information in due course. In the meantime, I wanted to share an extract of application’s mission statement.

“Based on common goals and a shared identity, the alliance’s vision is to deliver education and research with added value and societal impact through higher education’s third mission – engagement with wider society and direct contribution to the social and economic development.

As cities across Europe and further afield take an increasingly important role in meeting contemporary and future challenges, the U!REKA European University will become a destination of choice for students and urban stakeholders as an international applied research and education network, creating a new kind of European urban professionals equipped to meet those challenges.”