As the European Research Area (ERA) celebrates its 25th anniversary, 2025 marks a pivotal moment to reflect on past achievements and to reinforce the ERA’s mission of building a more coherent, open and impactful European Research & Innovation ecosystem. With the new ERA Policy Agenda 2025–2027, renewed political attention is being placed on strengthening the role of Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) as central actors in driving research excellence, talent development, innovation capacity and societal engagement.
Within this evolving landscape, institutional transformation of HEIs remains a strategic priority to ensure that universities can fully contribute to the ERA’s long-term vision. This includes reinforcing synergies between research and education, fostering institutional openness, enabling interoperable research careers and strengthening international and intersectoral cooperation.
Against this backdrop, three HORIZON Europe WIDERA projects— CATALISI, Accelerate Future HEI, and aUPaEU—have been developing and piloting concrete acceleration services and institutional transformation models to help HEIs modernise their structures and embrace ERA priorities, by ultimately contributing to Action 13, Empower Higher Education Institutions to develop in line with the ERA. Together, these projects have developed a set of shared challenges, evidences and recommendations that can inform future policy developments and support the implementation of the next ERA Policy Agenda.
Insights from the INSPIRING ERA project, designed to “bring the ERA closer to its research community” will be featured. INSPIRING ERA plays a crucial role in bridging policy and practice by connecting policymakers with universities, researchers and innovation actors, supporting them in understanding and applying the outcomes of the European Research Area and the implementation of the ERA Policy Agenda in their everyday institutional context.
This webinar will provide a unique opportunity to:
- align policy directions with project outcomes developed by some WIDERA projects;
- to strengthen cooperation and dialogue between EU institutions, policymakers, and researchers, university alliances and practitioners across the ERA;
- celebrate 25 years of the ERA by showcasing how projects and institutions are already shaping the ERA of the future.
This event is organised by the EU CATALISI project.
View the programme.
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