Pelegrí Viader and Eduard Vallory are two of the leaders of the Eutopia project at UPF. Viader has a long career at UPF as a math professor among other responsibilities, and he is a former Vice-rector and current Rector’s Commissioner for Eutopia. Vallory is part of the Advisory Board of the Eutopia Alliance and he has led education and cultural projects such as Escola Nova 21 and CATESCO, the Catalan Centre for UNESCO.
especial Eutopia Week
Before European university alliances came up in 2019, student engagement and student bodies were majorly unilateral, extending across a single university or nation. The rise of transnational alliances expanded the idea of student engagement by aiming to reach a wider range of student bodies and create pan-Europe inter-university platforms for networking. One such alliance, EUTOPIA, stands out among others when it comes to the idea of being student-centric.
EUTOPIA is one of the 41 alliances of the European Universities Initiative that are testing and seeking the transformation of Higher Education. But what is it exactly? How did it emerge? What is at stake and what does it politically mean to be part of an alliance? Let’s try to answer those questions.