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European Track
EUPeace is offering a European Track to all its students! The European Track is currently being tested in a pilot phase for the academic year 2025/2026 - its concept, content and offers will be continuously developed and updated!
Introducing… the European Track
Europe is facing a formidable set of challenges – and our governments and societies need to find the answers that meet them. The historian Adam Tooze describes our age as an age of "polycrisis": everything – politics, geopolitics, war, pandemics, climate change – seems to be coming at us all at once; and if we feel overwhelmed, we're certainly not alone. Disorientation seems to have become a collective status quo, a new norm.
But how do we re-orientate ourselves? And how can we build and sustain peaceful, equitable and inclusive societies at a time like this? Questions like these are becoming increasingly urgent, and very far from being mere topics of abstract academic debate, they are deeply entwined with our personal, educational and professional lives.
Peace, justice, and inclusivity are the core ideals of EUPeace, and they are the themes at the heart of the European Track as well. The European Track is our brand-new bespoke certificate for students enrolled at EUPeace universities. As an EUPeace student, it offers you the opportunity to:
· choose from a diverse and interdisciplinary range of courses offered across our Alliance of nine universities – whether in person or in virtual or hybrid format;
· study abroad at one of our partner universities — whether for a semester or a year abroad, or for a short-term “Blended Intensive Programme” (BIP);
· earn up to three certificates recognising the knowledge and skills you acquire!
Whatever your course of study, and whatever career plans you have in mind, our goal is to equip you to help build a democratic, just, and peaceful Europe – and world – that's fit for the 21st century. Interested? Read on!
How does it work?
Mobility and interculturality are at the core of the European Track: we want to encourage you to explore new places, countries, cultures, styles of teaching and learning, and ways of looking, seeing, and thinking. Here are the key facts:
· The Track comprises three levels, each of which consists of 6 ECTS points.
· After completion of a European Track course, the ECTS points assigned to that course count towards your Track.
· After 6 points, you are eligible for the Level 1 certificate; after 12 points, Level 2; and after 18 points, Level 3!
· At Level 1, you will be able to select and complete courses offered as part of our Virtual European Exchange Programme (VEEP): our tailor-made Alliance-wide programme for virtual and hybrid teaching and learning.
· Go abroad for Level 2 and Level 3! We will be encouraging you to make the most of the wonderful opportunities provided by Erasmus+ programmes to study at an EUPeace university and complete some in-person European Track courses while you are there.
You will want (and probably need) to complete other courses and modules while you are abroad. Your local international offices and Erasmus coordinators can show you how to make the European Track part of your personal study programme and schedule. And of course, if you’re itching for a change of scene earlier than that, you can go abroad for Level 1 as well!
Is the European Track for me?
The European Track will be offered at all nine Alliance universities and open to students on a wide array of study programmes in a large number of different fields. You can find information that is specific to your home university — along with local contact details — via the different links below.
What will I learn?
It’s your Track. The choice is yours. Along with mobility and interculturality, diversity and interdisciplinarity are also integral elements of the European Track. But what does that mean in practice for you?
· We want there to be something for everyone. The European Track will include courses in different Alliance languages, including English, and drawn from a wide variety of subject areas.
· European Track courses will be organised, broadly, into the following seven thematic areas, each of which has both an interdisciplinary and a global aspect as depicted above.
· Area 1 offers you the opportunity to complete language courses or courses in intercultural communication with a particular specialist focus. We want to equip you to work internationally, so we strongly recommend that you aim to complete one or two courses in this area on the Track.
· Areas 2-4 are orientated towards the social sciences and the arts and humanities.
· Areas 5-7 will draw on the natural, environmental, and biomedical sciences, as well as various branches of engineering.
· There is no set combination of courses that you have to choose in order to complete any of the three levels.
Each of these thematic areas is inherently interdisciplinary: none of them fits neatly into traditional subject boundaries, and in fact, some of the courses you will study probably belong to several different areas at once.
And that is precisely the point! The challenges of tomorrow will only be addressed if all sorts of different people from different disciplines, different professions, and different walks of life work together. We want to equip you to be part of that.
You are free to stay in an area that you are familiar with. But we also want to encourage you to venture beyond your comfort zone, think outside the box, and try something new. Within the bounds of the European Track's course catalogue, and depending on how and where certain courses are offered, you have the freedom and flexibility of choice.
Whatever you choose: it's your Track.
How and when do I start?
· The Virtual European Exchange Programme (VEEP) – which will host the virtual and hybrid elements of the European Track – is already up and running in the spring/summer semesters of 2025.
· The European Track itself will be launching in its pilot phase in the autumn/winter semesters of 2025/2026. You will be able to collect ECTS points for the Track from that point onwards.
· Each university is currently selecting courses for the European Track and devising its own systems and rules for administering it.
· Over the next few months, we will be posting links to individual university pages on which you will find more specific information about how the Track will work at your university.
Interested? Bookmark this page, watch this space… and tell your friends!
