Our Mission

ENGAGE.EU is an alliance of leading European universities in business, economics, and social sciences with rich experience in analysing societal change. The ENGAGE.EU universities are the strongest partners in their regional ecosystems and become THE European University Initiative in business and economics fostering economic capability and societal development in Europe.

Our ambition is to enable our learners to act as socially engaged European citizens and to society at large as experts on business and economics and social sciences.

For this purpose, we have decided to transform ourselves into the ENGAGE.EU European University and change the way we educate, investigate, innovate and reach out. We want to become an incubator for building the knowledge on future business needs, driving economic capability and societal development based on academic excellence and working with society. The regional distribution of our universities allows for an innovative “think local, act global” approach: combining the knowledge on the specifics of the regional ecosystems and linking them at the European level will offer multi-dimensional and sustainable solutions.

Starting points are the big challenges that Europe is confronted with:

• digitalisation and artificial intelligence transforming economies and societies,
• climate change and its meaning for sustainable economies,
• aging societies,
• the economic crises caused by the pandemic,
• migration, and

all challenges related to the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Building on our solid background in business, economics, and social sciences, we strive for a comprehensive approach, following three interconnected paths: Engaged Learning, Engaged Research and Innovation and Engaged in Society.

Engaged Learning

We will build a joint ENGAGE.EU University Campus with a common course catalogue a range of real and virtual mobility opportunities embedded into our programmes, challenge-specific signatory courses and a large offering of micro-credentials to equip our learners with the new skills and competences they need to contribute to Europe’s economic capability and societal development.

Most of our courses will be blended and we commit to accompanying all our learners in innovative ways. By widening our learners’ and staffs’ international exposure, we will foster their responsiveness to society, to be knowledge-driven and open-minded citizens, who think out of the box and act across borders and disciplines.

Engaged Research and Innovation

We will create the ENGAGE.EU University Think Tank tackling the business and economic dimensions of the SDGs and involving Communities for Societal Change (CSC) that will map causes and consequences of societal changes and provide analyses supporting the actions of the Alliance. In particular, the regional distribution of the ENGAGE.EU partners allows for a multidimensional perspective on hot economic topics in Europe, e.g. on migration.

We will push the boundaries of research and innovation by joining forces with stakeholders from industry, nonprofit organisations, and the public sector, aiming for a lasting impact on societal development.

Engaged in Society

Bridging Research and Innovation and Society, we will establish a series of ENGAGE.EU Labs where students, lifelong learners, researchers, innovators, companies, citizens’ initiatives and policy-makers will collaborate to find knowledge-based solutions to real-world problems.

We will set up and organise ENGAGE.EU Work Integrated Learning Programs that support practitioners to become responsible influencers and bring about change in their respective organizations, combining the latest academic insights with the highest professional standards.

Engaged in Sustainable Cooperation

We bring together communities of students, staff and stakeholders at all levels of our organizations, covering a wide range of roles and professions, from learners to teachers, from researchers to innovators, from admission officers to librarians, from HR officials to incubator managers, our Rectors and Presidents. They all will create an ENGAGE.EU spirit of excellence, integrity, diversity and inclusion and will cooperate in task and deliverable-oriented co-creation.

We foresee a systematic expansion of ENGAGE.EU approaches and deliverables to growing numbers of programs, levels (short cycle, bachelor, master, doctorate, lifelong learning), fields of study and research and services (to learners, staff and society) over the three-year pilot period.

By the end of the three-year period, we will mainstream all current tasks. We will gear new external funding towards new activities and new dimensions in the period 2024-2027. In this way, we want to ensure that our Alliance will renew itself constantly. We will set up an ENGAGE.EU Endowment to attract and manage service fees and donations obtained from partners and third parties. The endowment will have a legal entity in order to institutionalise our cooperation and prepare ourselves for a future European University Statute.

Who we are

The ENGAGE.EU European University is composed of the Libera Università Internazionale degli Studi Sociali Guido Carli in Rome (Luiss), the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH) in Bergen, Tilburg University, the University of Mannheim, the University of National and World Economy in Sofia, the University of Toulouse 1 Capitole and Vienna University of Economics and Business, reflecting the diversity of Europe. Our alliance is currently the academic home to over 100,000 students, academics and staff who cooperate enthusiastically, co-create and share their interdisciplinary and cross-cultural knowledge.

                                                                                                                                                               Mannheim, 21 October 2021