Results of the second EUniWell Seed Funding Call

EUniWell’s second Seed Funding Call has again been answered by a large number of excellent and creative well-being-related project proposals. Out of forty-four incoming project ideas, the following nine have been selected for funding for a one-year project phase in 2021/22:

Well-beIntercompehension

This project aims to spread the Intercompehension (IC) teaching of Romanic and Germanic languages across the member universities of EUniWell. Similar to the already existing Romanic IC activities, the project plans to create activities for the Germanic languages. To top this up, their plan is to build a bridge between Romance and Germanic IC by developing didactic approaches and materials. Online IC Courses (MOOC) are going to be implemented and the project plans to organise IC tandems between students of partner universities. Led by University of Florence, the partners in this project are Semmelweis University, Linnaeus University and University of Nantes. For questions concerning this project, please contact Hugues Sheeren.

Urbanity and well-being: co-designing an authentic teaching approach

With a very ambitious goal in mind, this project is planning to set up an interdisciplinary teaching module on “Urbanity and well-being” for last year undergraduate studies including the Universities of Birmingham, Florence and Leiden in the academic term 2022/23. Starting off with the design of the module in cooperation with professional services and students, the main themes shall be evaluated. The module will be consisting of cross-European multidisciplinary teams in the field of geography, urban design and planning. By using a blended teaching approach, the module will be available for all of consortium partners. For questions regarding this project, please contact Irina Kuznetsova.

Advanced understanding of well-being tourism, drawing upon the European biocultural heritage

Well-being tourism is, according to this new concept, tourism that supports harmony and balance of body, mind and soul, for both guests and hosts, in a sustainable interaction with the local community and environment. The goal of this project is to introduce the concept of well-being tourism to partner regions and identify the common research interests in this field. This shall include a student experience exchange between partners. The project is led by Linnaeus University and includes University of Florence, University of Nantes, and University of Birmingham as partners. For questions regarding this project, please contact Lina Lindell.

MaterialWell – Material Sciences for well-being

MaterialWell is a cooperation including all seven partner universities. It aims to bring together the best ideas from the departments of Life Sciences in order to facilitate knowledge and innovation transfer. Teaming up with relevant associated partners, the group can work together for future Research and Innovation project calls on EU level. Another important aim is to establish a teaching and training programme, especially at masters and PhD level. For question concerning the project, please contact Chris Ewels or Andrew J Morris.

Migration and diversity in European cities (MADEINEUROPE): interdisciplinary multi-sited summer school

The overall aim of the MADEINEUROPE project is to initiate collaboration across the EUniWell network around issues of migration, diversity and inclusion through an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary lens, in terms of research, teaching and public engagement. The specific objective of the project group is an interdisciplinary, research-driven summer school on migration, diversity and inclusion, focused primarily on European cities. The pilot course is aimed for 30 postgraduate and research students in the EUniWell network and practitioners. Led by the University of Birmingham, the projects includes 4 partner universities: University of Cologne, Linnaeus University, Leiden University and University of Florence. For questions concerning this project, please contact Nando Sigona.

Being an inclusive university for refugee students: concepts, methods and tools

The project aims to test a specific refugee tutoring activity helping refugees to master the European tertiary education system. The project will include a workshop to exchange ideas and best practices between the EUniWell partners. The tutoring system shall help to strengthen knowledge and communication possibilities for universities to help refugee students to avoid constraints and problems. Training of the tutors is one of the most crucial points in order to succeed for this project. The project is coordinating by the University of Florence and includes University of Birmingham, Leiden University, and Linnaeus University. For questions concerning this project, please contact Alberto Tonini or Ivana Acocella.

Civic leadership to improve social well-being – embedding innovative and cultural civic leadership approaches in Enterprise Education

This project’s goal is to create a shared digital platform in order to improve social well-being. Within the platform one can explore the various opportunities from universities, public and private partners to deliver the UN SGDs on a local level. The objectives of the team are a civic leadership forum, a civic leadership education website and also a symposium sharing the outcomes of each stakeholder. The initial partners for this project are the University of Birmingham as coordinator, Linnaeus University and the University of Cologne. For questions concerning this project, please contact Julian Pänke, Helen Hook or Lloyd Jenkins.

Mental health in the EUniWell community

Mental health has become an increasingly important issue during these last months of the pandemic and social distancing. This is provided for by including two projects that treat mental health of students and staff from different perspectives. The two projects are asked to collaborate to synergize their mutual efforts to support mental health amongst the EUniWell community.

a) Mental health literacy among students: the ability to recognise, manage, and prevent mental illness

The goal of this project is to build a creative and innovative higher education landscape that has a measurable impact on the well-being of European citizens. In a first step, the group aims to obtain the current mental health status quo of the students of the participating universities. This project group, representing teaching/research/staff in mental health as well as students, wants to investigate the level of mental health literacy and the relationship to other constructs, such as help-seeking behaviour, psychological distress, resilience, defence mechanisms, and self-stigma among students from the EUniWell consortium universities. The main goal is to improve the knowledge and also problem-solving skill concerning mental health issues. Led by University of Cologne, the project includes the University of Florence, Leiden University, University of Nantes and Semmelweis University. For questions regarding the project, please contact Rainer Weber.

b) The mental health symposium: exploring and enhancing mental health initiatives and resources

The purpose of the mental health symposium is to emphasise the importance of mental health awareness amongst the EUniWell community. Throughout the year, students from each university will be asked to collect data in each university on mental health and well-being. After this process, a symposium will be created in order to incorporate new ideas. After the symposium phase, the group plans to build up an online platform to exchange ideas and report progress. This project, led by Semmelweis, includes all the universities of the consortium. For questions regarding the project, please contact Hana Idelbi.