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Society
EUPeace acknowledges the importance to initiate societal dialogue as part of its goals reflecting the so-called third mission of universities to engage in and with society. We will therefore develop the EUPeace Living Peace Lab Flagship Action as a platform for civic community engagement by means of campus-related, regional, and international cooperation bringing together a variety of stakeholders including civil society, policy makers, NGOs, or companies. It will be specifically designed to encourage societal dialogue and innovation around the topics of peace, justice, and inclusiveness. The Living Peace Lab will be a collaboration hub for generating physical and virtual spaces where stakeholders can meet and find support for developing co-creating teams and engaging across the academia-society divide. This will create a virtuous cycle of continuous exchange between higher education institutions and society, which contributes to a strong policy and innovation impact of the EUPeace Alliance.
EUPeace wants to contribute to the effective conditions and impact of peace, justice, and inclusiveness, ensuring that the Alliance is attuned to societal factors which threaten them in Europe and the world. It is important to engage both the EUPeace community and external stakeholders in a dialogue and establish the Living Peace Lab as a permanent civic engagement and innovation environment, where sensitive topics can be tackled together. Furthermore, EUPeace aims to generate concrete solutions and approaches that can be translated into research projects, spin-offs, and integrated into the European Track and other courses. Last but not least, we want to use information and data generated via the Living Peace Lab to improve the long-term sustainability of EUPeace beyond single project-based activities.
Community engagement is key for the success of this initiative. The Living Peace Lab emphasises and enables both grassroots formats to support the emergence of co-creating teams and the development of strategic partnerships beyond academia. The key to both is the development of three assets: a compelling narrative, collaboration spaces and a support base, and actor engagement. The Living Peace Lab will be the initial catalyst of societal dialogue, and will then become a staple of the network that continues beyond the currently planned project and funding period.
To achieve this, the work package Societal Dialogue will initiate the Living Peace Lab, a concept that integrates research and innovation processes via systematic co-creation.
As a first step, EUPeace will set up the Societal Dialogue Group with representatives from within and outside of the Alliance. The Societal Dialogue Group will develop Dialogue Bridge Formats, which create and ensure a living lab inspired environment that enables active and ongoing dialogue between the different actors. These Dialogue Bridge Formats will enable and coordinate participatory exchange, student engagement and reception of society’s needs and fears in the areas of peace and justice into teaching and research, leading to the emergence of co-creating teams. Based on existing experience within the Alliance, the emerging topics will be translated into specific activities, setting impulses for all work packages.
EUPeace will integrate community engagement into EUPeace Curricula. Therefore, as one of the Bridge Formats, we will establish possibilities for community engagement in non-university venues for suitable Alliance degree programmes. Together with the mobilised external stakeholders, this Bridge Format will focus on developing work-based learning approaches following the example of the INCOPS Programme Marburg University and the Service Learning Model at Universidad Pontificia Comillas, which embeds community-oriented service learning in every degree across all disciplines. Work-based volunteer experiences or internships will take place at institutions such as the Refugee Law Clinic in Giessen. For students, this offers insights into working in fields related to peace, justice and inclusive societies.
In order to strengthen EUPeace institutional embeddedness beyond disciplinary boundaries, EUPeace will offer specialised courses on soft skills for challenge-based learning environments to Alliance students and staff. These courses are developed together with the members, and are focused on critical thinking and problem solving, conflict resolution, mediation, constructively dealing with diversity, and intercultural awareness. They will give students and staff the opportunity to think and experience EUPeace topics outside of academic settings, and ensure that the vision of EUPeace is embedded in the institutions beyond disciplinary boundaries.
Last but not least, EUPeace wants to foster local and regional embeddedness of the Alliance. The Living Peace Lab framework will also serve all Alliance members to develop the nexus between individual universities and their respective cities, regions and wider ecosystems.
EUPeace Living Lab
A Living Lab is an innovation open ecosystem in which universities, civil society, the private sector, government, and citizens interact to co-create and test solutions that have a positive and sustainable impact within the work ambit of the laboratory, in our case: peace, justice, and inclusive societies.
