"When we combine research and education, students and universities thrive" (B. Buchenau, Aurora)

"We are shifting towards a sense of higher education where it's not sufficient to just be affiliated with one institution, people need to have been in different countries and spoken different languages", says Barbara Buchenau, Professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany) and leader of the work package 2 'Transdisciplinary European Research-Driven Educational Hubs' of Aurora, in an interview with News Tank on 20/05/2025.

"Making the junction between education and research is both impossible and very feasible: one presents knowledge that is confirmed, has been tested and everybody more or less agrees on, the other one is doing the opposite. It takes a lot more preparation to run a course that is research-driven, but that's what students like."

Alliances are funded by Erasmus+, which covers education activities only, so they have to get creative to develop research and innovation projects. A situation that Barbara Buchenau hopes to see change in the future: "I hope that there will be possibilities to apply for research and education funding and connect the two, because when…