What makes a European University Alliance more than a funding arrangement? At EUNICoast, a large part of the answer lies in its Teaching & Research Hubs – five interdisciplinary teams that bring together academics and students from all 13 partner universities around the coastal and maritime challenges that define the alliance. This week in Dubrovnik, the Hubs worked across three days and three distinct missions: exploring the alliance’s transformative potential, shaping its collaborative research priorities, and building alignment between the Hubs and the Work Package teams driving the project forward.
Starting with the big picture
On Sunday evening, before the technical sessions began, Hub members gathered for a joint meeting on the transformative potential of EUNICoast. Moderated by Marcos Nadal, the session placed the alliance’s work within the broader arc of the European Universities Initiative – an initiative that now encompasses 65 alliances, more than 600 universities, and over 10 million students. Yet as Marcos explained, most alliances remain project-based rather than structurally integrated into their member institutions. The challenge is to move from cooperation that depends on a grant cycle to transformation that outlasts it.
For the Hubs, this framing was direct. The knowledge they produce and the programmes they shape are the mechanisms through which EUNICoast can demonstrate that a consortium of small and medium-sized coastal universities can act as an engine of structural change. Marcos identified five persistent barriers to long-term integration – from legal and regulatory constraints to uneven institutional engagement – and asked Hub members to consider how their work could address these barriers from within.
The mood was both honest and ambitious. What can the alliance achieve that its member universities cannot do alone? And what concrete role does interdisciplinary, place-based research play in making that ambition real?
Building a shared research agenda
Monday’s sessions focused on the Common Research Agenda (CRA) – the framework that will guide collaborative research across the alliance through 2028. Over two working sessions, Hub leaders and researchers worked through the agenda’s thematic priorities, ensuring alignment with each institution’s research strengths.
Since their first meetings, the Hubs have evolved from mutual introductions into structured working groups. Members have moved from discussing basic principles – how to integrate local knowledge and the productive world into academic research – to proposing joint degrees, developing micro-credentials, and co-designing the CRA itself. A recurring theme across Hubs has been the effort to ensure coherence between research plans and educational programmes, so that the two reinforce each other rather than running on parallel tracks.
“We decided to change something in our proposals because we wanted more coherence between our teaching and our research,” said Alessandra Casu, co-chair of Hub 3 (Governance, planning, and monitoring of coastal territories). “That also means making public engagement stronger and putting researchers in touch with students from the start of their academic career.”
This kind of deliberate alignment was visible across the Hubs. During the joint session later in the week, members raised the idea that some research lines might need to operate transversally across Hub boundaries – for instance, environmental and social monitoring could support all five thematic areas rather than sitting within a single Hub. The CRA, once validated by Vice-Rectors for Research & Innovation on Wednesday, is designed to accommodate this kind of cross-cutting collaboration.
From research expertise to curriculum design
The Hubs’ work does not stop at research. On Tuesday morning, they joined a consultation session with WP2 (Education), led by Pau de Vílchez Moragues and Ricardo Sagrera from UIB, to feed their disciplinary expertise directly into the design of joint educational programmes. This is where the alliance’s research and education missions connect: the academics who study coastal biodiversity, blue tourism, or marine engineering are the same people shaping the microcredentials, Blended Intensive Programmes, and joint degrees that students will take.
Exchanging with Work Package leaders
Later on Tuesday, the Hubs sat down with the Steering Committee and Work Package leaders for a joint session designed to build alignment between the two sides of the project. Each WP leader gave a brief overview of their milestones and priorities for the year – putting a face on the structures that Hub members had, until now, mostly encountered on paper.
The conversation that followed was open. Hub members asked for more structured face-to-face working time at future assemblies, a consolidated calendar so that activities across the alliance do not overlap, and practical support for daily digital collaboration. The Steering Committee agreed to address each of these points. The exchange confirmed that the project’s two engines – the thematic expertise of the Hubs and the operational drive of the Work Packages – are beginning to find a shared rhythm.
What comes next for the Hubs
The Common Research Agenda moves to the Vice-Rectors for Research & Innovation on Wednesday for institutional validation. The educational programmes shaped in consultation with the Hubs will be further developed by the Education Commission in the coming months. And the Hubs themselves continue to grow – with academics and students from each partner university, they represent a distributed network of researchers working across five thematic areas that span from cultural heritage on islands to marine renewable energy.
The General Assembly continues through 12 March. Follow EUNICoast on LinkedIn for updates.
