Unite! Student Festival Lisbon 2023 at ULisboa

For three days, the University of Lisbon experienced a special moment with the presence of two hundred students from European universities of the Unite! alliance!, the Universidade de Lisboa, Aalto University (Finland), KTH - Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), Grenoble INP - UGA (France), Politecnico di Torino (Italy), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain), Graz University of Technology (Austria), Wroclaw University of Science and Technology (Poland) and Technical University of Darmstadt (Germany), who gathered in the Unite! Student Festival, in what was the first alliance event, by students, for students.

Distributed across 6 stages at ULisboa, students, gathered in 18 work subgroups, debated and deepened the following themes: Student Engagement in Unite!, through Online Teaching, Sustainability and Energy Crisis, Inclusion, Diversity and Well-being being in the daily life of students, the University of the Future and How to Communicate Unite!.

Over the three days, various activities were carried out that allowed participants to learn a little more about the culture of all Unite! member countries, discover Lisbon and reflect and debate ideas on each of the themes.

The team work developed in the first two days resulted in the presentation of 18 Pitch, on the last day, to a full audience at the Great Hall of the University of Lisbon, with extremely important proposals for the Unite! and, consequently, for the University of the Future.

The various teams of students presented strategies that aim to contribute to improving education, sustainability, inclusion, the well-being of the academic community, digital transformation and communication, reflecting on the challenges of this alliance.

The Unite! Student Festival was an important and memorable moment for the Unite! alliance, ending with an Arraial party at the "Cantina Velha" Diner Hall, in a joint celebration of what unites the nine universities, embracing their different knowledge, learning and creating a space of mutual inspirations.

Unite! (University Network for Innovation, Technology and Engineering) is an alliance of 9 European Universities that aims to continue the creation of a European Higher Education Area that, through a new generation of Europeans, committed to transnational, transdisciplinary and multilingual cooperation, is able to face the great societal challenges, helping to assert Europe's leadership as a knowledge space.

Photos: Tiago Duarte