The first half of 2019 has been full of exciting and remarkable activities for the ACA family! With 3 events, 3 ongoing projects, 2 working groups, new colleagues and a revamp of its communication strategy and online presence, this 6-month journey has brought energy and enthusiasm.

Events

On 1 February 2019, ACA’s flagship seminar, What’s new in Brussels?, opened the 2019 series of ACA events. With about 120 participants and top-notch speakers, the event fostered lively discussions on key topics such as the new Erasmus 2021-2027 programme, European Universities and the post-ET2020 framework.  

On 21 February 2019, ACA addressed the need of widening inclusion in international higher education activities and in the Erasmus 2021-2027 programme during a half-day event, titled Internationalisation for all? Wider inclusion in the internationalisation of higher education. The event was jointly organised by ACA and three ACA members - the German DAAD, the Norwegian Diku and the Flemish FKA. Based on the valuable insights brought about by the event, ACA published a related Reflection Paper in April 2019.

On 13-14 June 2019, ACA organised, together with UNICA, a joint stakeholder event on behalf of their respective project teams – GREET and Academic Refuge. The event, titled Higher Education Values in Practice - Integration of highly skilled refugees and at-risk academics in Europe, gathered more than 120 participants for two-day exchanges on academic freedom, higher education role and values, internationalisation of higher education and support for highly skilled refugees, and cooperation at European level.

Projects overview

On 26-27 February 2019, the new Horizon2020 project that ACA is coordinating, CARe (Career Advancement for Refugee Researchers in Europe), officially kicked off in Brussels. In June and July 2019, ACA and its project partners DAAD and EDUFI organised four focus groups with refugee researchers, as part of the project. The focus groups were conducted in the Netherlands, Belgium, Austria and Germany – four of the 10 project countries. Between September and December 2019, the remaining focus groups will take place in France, Finland, Sweden, Norway, Ireland and Switzerland. The project consortium would like to thank ACA members and partners for their support in organising the focus groups. More information will be available soon on the CARe project page. The CARe project is also on LinkedIn, Twitter and the EURAXESS portal. 

As part of the GREET project, in February and March 2019, the consortium delivered three webinars on the integration of highly skilled refugees, focusing, respectively, on the role of European higher education community, on cooperation with stakeholders for accessing the job market and on how to create sustainable career paths. All the recorded webinars are available on the ACA YouTube channel.

Concerning the Study in Europe initiative, ACA’s main role within this phase of the project was related to the organisation of webinars for promotion agencies and higher education institutions (HEIs). The webinar for promotion agencies took place on 6 June 2019, under the topic Online promotion – virtual formats, while the one for HEIs was delivered on 12 June 2019 under the title Study in Europe initiative – higher education fairs in Ethiopia and Nigeria (recording available here).

ACA Secretariat

Representatives of ACA member organisations met in two occasions - the Administrative Council in April 2019 and the General Assembly in June 2019 - to discuss projects and activities, exchange ideas and share practices. Two new trainees joined the Secretariat in January 2019 and played a key role in supporting the ACA Newsletter – Education Europe and in boosting ACA social media presence on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook.

ACA thanks its members, partners and friends for this thrilling half-year experience and looks forward to future projects and activities and to further increasing synergies and cooperation!