This is what UniPID has been up to: Our August and early September

Summer holidays ended and the academic year has officially started, which means we are ready to work! UniPID has concentrated on planning, brainstorming and seeking synergies. With whom? Read more and find out!

Summer holidays ended and the academic year has officially started, which means we are back to reality and ready to work!

In August UniPID concentrated on planning, brainstorming and seeking synergies. With whom? Well, within our Coordination Unit, our Board members, our teachers and our external partners. We held the UniPID Planning Days, a two-day event where we brainstormed ideas for strengthening our member university engagement, seeking opportunities for cooperation with their existing sustainability initiatives. Also, ethical considerations related to global academic partnerships and ways to foster integration of Global South perspectives in programme planning were discussed. Additionally, we hosted our first Teacher’s Workshop, looking to meet and create a space for teachers to share ideas, accomplishments, and challenges on their UniPID courses.

UniPID has also participated in different policy dialogues. In cooperation with the Ministry for Foreign Affairs, we finalized the second call of the year for tender proposals for the development policy related commissioned studies, which are currently under review. We are working on a discussion paper related to help focus the implementation of Finland’s Africa Strategy. Also, we participated in a policy paper validation workshop of the advisory group on research and innovation for Africa-Europe Cooperation. The LEAP-RE project is moving forward in providing support to EU-Africa collaboration in renewable energies, evaluating proposals submitted to the open call, and undertaking research activities in the 8 consortium projects. We also met with UNIFI vice-rectors, contributing to the development of sustainability education cooperation between universities. A new collaboration was started with the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (TENK) with a meeting to discuss cooperation possibilities related to ethical considerations of global academic partnerships. With the Finnish Society of Development Research (FSDR) cooperation continues, working on the Master's Award in Development Studies, UniPID's DocNet, and the Development Days for 2022. Last but certainly not least, we joined forces with HELSUS, looking to define cooperation pathways for sustainability.

So, UniPID's fall has started busy, and we are looking forward to continue developing our actions and all the inspiring and well started cooperation!

Photo credit: Patrick Perkins, 2017, on Unsplash