University College Dublin (UCD) and Universität Zürich (UZH) joined Freie Universität Berlin and eight other leading universities in the university alliance
The European university alliance Una Europa, which already includes Freie Universität Berlin, has accepted two new members, bringing the total number to eleven partners. Una Europa announced on Monday that University College Dublin (UCD) and Universität Zürich (UZH) are joining the alliance of leading European universities. The founding members of Una Europa are Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna, University of Edinburgh, Helsingin Yliopisto, Uniwersytet Jagiellonski w Krakowie, KU Leuven, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, and Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. Una Europa partners draw on their collective strengths to shape the future of Europe through innovative education, research, and international exchange. Established in 2018, the Una Europa alliance has received funding from the European Commission since 2019, allowing the universities to intensify their collaborative efforts.
University College Dublin is a research-intensive university ranked in the top one per cent of higher education institutions worldwide. Established in 1854, UCD has played an important role in shaping modern Ireland, Europe, and beyond, producing numerous political, business, and cultural leaders, most notably the writer James Joyce. Universität Zürich is Switzerland’s largest comprehensive university and one of the foremost universities in the German-speaking world. Founded in 1833, UZH was Europe’s first university established by a democratic political system - the words "by the will of the people" remain engraved on its main building to this day.
With UCD and UZH, the Una Europa alliance now has more than half a million students and almost 100,000 university employees, with the number of digital learners in the millions. UCD and UZH have strong established links with Una Europa members; collectively, the new partners have published over 7,000 publications in collaboration with Una Europa alliance members in the last five years.
Established in 2018, the Una Europa alliance goes beyond traditional geographical and disciplinary boundaries to work towards a virtual ’multi-campus’ European university of the future. The alliance’s flagship project 1Europe aims to establish a Europe-wide living lab with over twenty joint innovative formats for education and mobility at its core, including the Una Europa Joint Bachelor in European Studies and Joint PhD in Cultural Heritage as well as the Joint Micro Module in Sustainability and the Continuous Education Certificate in Data Science and AI. In the Una.Resin project , the alliance is taking the first steps toward developing an Una Europa ecosystem for research and innovation by building a common research and innovation agenda, developing joint strategies for sharing infrastructures, and strengthening human capital.
