Empowering Research and Innovation Actions in Circle U.

Circle U.'s mission is to empower its staff and students to mobilize knowledge for impact.

The main objective of this project is to pilot initiatives that broaden and deepen our interactions with society and move towards common scientific agendas. We want to achieve this in three ways. First, we will use the Circle U.

Knowledge Hubs on Climate, Democracy and Global Health as platforms to host and test activities that strengthen the links between education, research, innovation and service to society.

Second, we will strengthen the human capital of Circle U. with a focus on empowering our early-career researchers, as they will define the future of our academic communities. Thirdly, we will link up with other European universities to help build the new European Research and Innovation Area.

The activities have been selected according to three criteria to maximise their impact: (1) the attractiveness of the proposed activities for researchers; (2) the close link between the proposed activities and those of the Erasmus+ application in order to create synergies; (3) the close link between the proposed activities and the objectives of the European Research Area.

We have therefore designed initiatives that aim to fulfil the following objectives: 1) encourage interdisciplinary research projects; 2) encourage the co-construction of solutions with non-academic sectors; 3) make research more accessible to citizens and practitioners.

These initiatives will be conceptualised and carried out through pilot actions, some implemented in a transversal manner and others, of a thematic nature, housed in a given Knowledge Hub.

The impact of these activities will be carefully assessed using a ""research on research approach"" to identify barriers and best practices, undertake a cost-benefit analysis and produce recommendations that we hope will not only contribute to transforming our universities but will also be a valuable source of information for FOREU2 alliances and beyond.