ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the evolutions which can be traced through the successive calls for projects published by the European Commission, dedicated to funding the European Universities Initiative (EUI), between 2020 and 2023. It reviews the shifting emphasis placed by the Commission on different aspects of European University Alliances (EUAs) in the main calls aimed at funding new EUAs or re-funding existing ones. During the same timeframe, further, more specific calls were also published by the Commission, to fund complementary alliance activities and development in two specific domains: (i) common higher education strategies leading towards a European Degree and (ii) a legal status for EUAs. Together, these calls set new top-down challenges, feeding into the Europeanisation process at work within alliances and aiming to affect the bottom-up evolution of practices within individual Higher Education Institutions. The chapter identifies perspectives for research on the challenges set for the EUI externally, on internal challenges specific to the way alliances function and on the processes by which these challenges shape everyday practices. It outlines a research agenda on the EUI and its possible future evolutions, by identifying various possible questions to be explored through different disciplinary approaches.
