Earlier in October, partners of the Internationalisation in higher education for society (IHES) project met in Olomouc in person to discuss future steps and plans for the last year of the project. Hosted by the Faculty of Law of Univerzita Palackého, discussions focused on IHES’ intellectual outputs and specifically on IHES Regional Laboratories, IHES Network of Organisations and IHES Repository.

The two regional IHES-Labs, one in Catalonia and one in the Olomouc region are currently taking place. After receiving an introductory training in IHES, staff from Universitat Rovira i Virgili and Palacký University Olomouc have introduced the internationalisation component in several of their social engagement activities. The experience gained there is being used to create the guidelines for implementing IHES in order to secure the sustainability and distribution of the project results beyond the consortium and the project timeline. They will provide practical instructions on how to proceed for those interested in implementing IHES projects successfully.

The guidelines, which are currently being drafted, will represent a sum of the intellectual outputs achieved during the first years of the project implementation and, consequently, combining findings from previous reports, including guidelines, good practices and the practical Introductory IHES sessions held in the two experimental regions. This tool will allow the findings of the other outputs to be operative, generating a regional model approach that will be implementable in regions across Europe and beyond.

Finally, an online IHES resource centre will be launched in parallel which will feature information on the IHES Network of Organisations open to new members from Europe and across the globe. IHES results/publications, upcoming IHES activities and events, including regional activities and annual IHES network conference will be presented. The regional lab activities and best practices identified from the survey in the form of interactive map will also be included. The IHES Network aims to ensure long-term sustainability by promoting IHES, changing mindset in favour of IHES, exchanging best practices through interactive map, increasing number of IHES related projects and growing IHES community and culture further.