XIV Unite! Dialogue: turning pilot into practice in Stockholm

From 12 to 14 October, KTH Royal Institute of Technology welcomed more than 300 colleagues from the nine universities of the Unite! alliance for the XIV Unite! Dialogue. Held under the theme “Turning pilot into practice”, the three-day event marked a clear shift for the alliance: from testing ideas to implementing them and building long-term impact.

An opening that set the tone

The Dialogue opened on Monday 12 October, hosted by Stefan Östlund, Vice President of International Relations at KTH, and Åsa Carlsson, Key Liaison Officer. Anders Söderholm, President of KTH and Vice President of Unite!, gave the opening speech and welcomed participants to the campus.

Marcel Sobecki, President of SURE!, then spoke about representation and empowerment, a reminder that students are partners in shaping the alliance. Andreas Winkler, Unite! Secretary General, closed the ceremony with a keynote titled Turning pilot into practice: how Unite! learned to become a European University Alliance.

What the alliance has achieved

The keynote took stock of the progress made since the pilot phase, with figures that show steady growth in participation over the past two years.

In education, Unite! now offers 48 collaborative courses, which have involved 1,537 students, alongside 10 COILs (Collaborative Online International Learning) and 31 BIPs (Blended Intensive Programmes).

In research and doctoral education, the alliance has funded 45 projects between 2022 and 2026 through the Seed Fund for Research and PhD, involved 477 master’s and PhD students, and opened 85 shared courses to all Unite! PhD students.

These results lead into the next stage for the alliance: a new phase of mainstreaming and scaling up.

From research to market: the innovation panel

The opening session also included an innovation panel moderated by Viktor Olsson. It brought together Jessica Retzlaff, Innovation Manager at TU Darmstadt; Jonas Genchel, CEO and co-founder of Zparq, a company that started as a student project within a KTH research project; and Kristina von Oelreich, Head of the KTH Sustainability Office. Their discussion showed how ideas born in universities can grow into real-world solutions, a direction that is central to Unite!’s focus on industry and impact.

Three days of exchange

The programme gave the alliance’s communities, governing bodies and student representatives time to meet, with community meetings, the Rectors’ Workshop, the Governing Platform, the Academic Forum, and sessions for the Vice Presidents for Education, Research and Internationalisation. Student bodies (SURE! and the Student Liaison Officers) and the widening community also had dedicated slots.

Interactive parallel sessions, led by the communities, covered topics such as sustainable transformation, designing collaborative courses across European universities, lessons learned from the European Digital Campus, collaboration with R&I ecosystem actors, how to obtain a Unite! IDEA Certificate, and the dialogue between student representation and institutions. The “U! stories” session on Wednesday looked at successes and opportunities created through Unite!.

U! Stories: voices from across the alliance

The U! Stories sessions gave the floor to people who make the alliance work day to day. Under the title Unite! Stories: seed fund and beyond, Gernot Kubin (Professor, TU Graz), Kjartan Gudmundsson (Associate Professor, KTH), Christine Mady (Senior Lecturer, Aalto University) and Agnieszka Wyłomańska (Professor, Wrocław Tech) shared what the Seed Fund made possible and what came after.

A second session, Unite! Stories: international outlook, widened the view to languages, digital learning and staff development. Speakers were Verena Schwägerl-Melchior (Head of the Service Department Languages, TU Graz), Juha Martikainen (Digital Learning Ecosystem Solution Owner, Aalto University), Sébastien Mora (HR Development, Grenoble INP – UGA) and Anna Leśniewicz (engineer, scientist and teacher, Wrocław Tech). Sébastien Mora, in charge of recruitment and staff training, joined Unite! in 2020 and has worked on staff training, a catalogue of training offers and an inventory of well-being at work.

Students had their own session, Unite! Stories of SURE! and U! students, built around four talks:

• Matilde Godinho (University of Lisbon) opened the session.

• Jakob Harden (Graz University of Technology) looked back at the earliest days of empowerment and student representation in the Unite! Academic Forum.

• Marcel Sobecki, President of SURE!, presented the hows and whys of SURE!: what the network wants to be and how it is getting there.

• Laila Zildzic (Graz University of Technology) asked why SURE! and U! students want to go beyond expectations.

The session also included an ideathon and a “New perspectives” segment with Vivi Bengs (Aalto University) and Max Ekstedt (KTH).

Building connections in doctoral education

Doctoral education was another focus of the Dialogue. Representatives from the partner universities developed plans for joint activities to help doctoral students and early-career researchers develop skills, exchange knowledge and establish research collaborations across the alliance. More information about these activities will follow in the coming months.

Discovering KTH

Beyond the meeting rooms, the programme offered a chance to explore the host university. Guided campus tours introduced visitors to KTH’s architecture, art and history. Participants also visited the historic R1 Reactor Hall, a very different part of KTH. The underground hall once housed Sweden’s first nuclear reactor; today, it is a space for culture, events and experimentation.
 

Celebrating the Unite! community

The Unite! Awards recognised nine recipients this year for their contributions to the alliance. The awards have become a moment to celebrate the people whose ideas and commitment help Unite! grow.

Next stop: Wrocław

The XIV Unite! Dialogue brought the alliance together as one project period drew to a close. A new two-year phase begins in November 2026, building on the work developed across the nine universities. The next Dialogue will be hosted by Wrocław in Poland under the title United for Impact: connecting ideas for a stronger Europe. As the first Dialogue of the new project cycle, it will be another chance to meet, share progress and turn plans into practice.