Behind every successful research project is a question that often goes unasked: how do the people working on it actually learn together? For the YOUROPE project, this is not an afterthought — it is a deliberate part of the design.
Eva Janebová, Katherine Wimpenny, and Lucy Roberts were invited as keynote speakers at the STAR Scholars Network’s 2026 Internationalisation of Higher Education, Digital Transformation, and Academic Diplomacy (iHED) conference, presenting on the theme of using professional learning communities for collaboration in international projects. Their session, moderated by Dr Aicha Adoui, drew directly from YOUROPE’s approach to building shared knowledge and practice across a consortium of 21 institutions spanning diverse national and disciplinary contexts.
Why infrastructure matters
It is easy to focus on a project’s goals and overlook the systems that make achieving them possible. Yet in large international research projects like those funded under Horizon Europe, the quality of learning and knowledge-sharing within the consortium is itself a form of impact. When partners genuinely understand each other’s contexts, build on each other’s insights, and develop shared methodological language, the research they produce is stronger — and so are the communities they work with.
The professional learning community nurtured within YOUROPE has been developed intentionally rather than left to emerge by chance. This philosophy is captured in the YOUROPE Manual for Virtual Interaction, which offers practical frameworks for meaningful collaboration across borders, institutions, and disciplines, and is freely available on the project website.
Sharing what works
The invitation to present as keynote speakers at iHED reflects YOUROPE’s broader commitment: not just to produce research, but to contribute to the wider ecosystem of European collaborative practice. The insights developed within this project have value beyond it — and sharing them with an international community of scholars is itself a form of democratic knowledge-making.
