22-23 October 2025
This year, we proudly celebrate five years of EUniWell – our European University for Well-Being. Over this time, our community has grown, collaborated, and learned together, shaping a shared vision of well-being across education, research, and society. These five years have been marked by meaningful achievements, lasting connections, and the collective spirit that drives us forward. None of this would have been possible without the dedication and support of our partners, colleagues, and friends. Thank you! You are EUniWell, and we couldn’t be happier to have you as part of our thriving community.
EUniWell’s vision and mission is to understand, improve, measure, and rebalance the well-being of individuals, our communities, and society as a whole – as well as to foster European values and a European identity. Based on our joint values – democratic, inclusive, diverse, research- and challenge-based, inter- and transdisciplinary, entrepreneurial, and co-creational – we develop an action-oriented response to well-being, grounded in high profile research expertise, educational leadership and civic engagement. We create research-based policy to inform decision-making and pedagogy to underpin skills development, and continually seek to make an impact on society.
At EUniWell, well-being is a living, moving idea. Multidimensional well-being ranges from individual quality of life to social cohesion and environmental balance at a planetary level. Balancing these dimensions implies an understanding of their relations and the capacity to boost their synergies. By exploring well-being in its different dimensions across the themes of health, social equality and equity, environmental change, cultural diversity and multilingualism, and teacher education, we create knowledge that travels beyond the classroom and informs real-world solutions.
At EUniWell, well-being is at the heart of everything we do. To explore its many dimensions, we work across five Thematic Arenas that connect our researchers, educators, administrators, and students: Health and Well-being, Social Equality and Well-being, Environmental Change and Well-being, Culture, Multilingualism and Well-being, and Teacher Education and Well-being. Each Arena acts as a hub for collaboration, bringing together expertise from different disciplines, subject fields, and countries to tackle complex well-being challenges. Our Thematic Arenas ensure that EUniWell addresses well-being in all its multiple forms. By combining learning with action, we help our communities move forward together – building healthier, smarter, and more resilient societies.
From the very beginning, EUniWell has supported collaboration across borders. Our Seed Funding Programme, launched in 2020, gives researchers, educators, students, and staff the chance to turn bold ideas into reality. To date, we have supported 72 projects through eight separate Calls for Proposals. These projects have brought together more than 300 partners from all of our member institutions, and the topics cover everything from AI ethics to student-led initiatives on mental health, language learning, and sustainability. The result is a vibrant network of people working across disciplines and countries, proving that small ideas can grow into impactful, long-term collaborations.
Through the EUniWell Well-Being Research Incubator, the Alliance has provided a platform for cutting-edge research projects that cross national and disciplinary boundaries. Thirteen projects connecting 61 researchers from across Europe have already been launched. Topics range from digital well-being to eco-social resilience, from cryo-electron microscopy to healthy, sustainable food systems on campus. These incubator projects don’t just create new knowledge; they connect academics with policymakers, industry, and communities, ensuring that research results are shared and applied where they matter most.
EUniWell is more than a university alliance. It is a community shaped by its deep and broad collaboration across all university dimensions. Through events and initiatives like FestiWell, the Open Lecture Series, and the EUniWell Training Academy, students and staff come together to explore why well-being matters and how we can advance it. Our Student Board gives students a real voice in decision-making and in shaping the future of the Alliance. Dedicated working groups (on diversity and inclusion, sustainable campuses, HR innovation and more) exchange best practices and strengthen the collaborations which help make EUniWell a growing community that supports its members in concrete, practical ways.
From its beginning, EUniWell has fostered initiatives – such as the EUniWell Service Learning and School Ambassadors programmes, the Civic Leadership Blog, and even the Science-to-Public Communication trainings – that link our universities with our local and regional communities. EUniWell strives to communicate the relevance and importance of science and academic research to the public. We seek to foster knowledge transfer not only in the sense of technological innovation, but also knowledge transfer into society and the regaining of trust in scientific facts to strengthen democratic resilience.
EUniWell doesn’t just look inward - it reaches outward. We’ve held biannual Rectors’ Assemblies across Europe, partnered with cities and civic leaders, and even created moments of global significance, such as when EUniWell students met President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Europe Day 2023. We have hosted the first Transatlantic Well-Being Summit with Teachers College, Columbia University in 2025, and are progressing towards international degree programmes. EUniWell is shaping a new model of what it means to be a European University: open, international, well-being centred, and deeply connected to society.
As EUniWell looks to the future, we are focused on expanding the impact of well-being across education, research and innovation, society and policy. We align our activities with European initiatives such as the Competitiveness Compass and the Union of Skills. Our emphasis will continue to be on equipping students and staff, researchers and educators with the skills to navigate a rapidly changing world, and the competencies to address these challenges with a thorough, science-driven knowledge base. Deepening partnerships across science, culture, politics, and industry, we will foster cross-sector collaboration and open science. By leading the conversation on well-being in higher education and beyond, EUniWell is shaping a culture where learning, innovation, and resilience go hand in hand – building stronger, healthier, and more connected communities for years to come.
EUniWell envisions a meaningful and sustainable change in academic culture and beyond, by integrating a well-being-based holistic and systems-thinking approach into our understanding of the core missions of our universities, into our structures for inter-university collaboration, and most importantly, by ensuring the well-being of our staff and students. These three interconnected strands underpin our activities towards fostering societies based on human dignity, freedom, democracy, equity, human rights, the rule of law and academic freedom as part of a diverse Europe and a better world. Beyond higher education and research, EUniWell seeks to become a Voice for Well-Being in society and in alignment with European values.
EUniWell will continue to strengthen collaborations with science, culture, politics, and industry - both within our regions and across the world. Plans are underway for a shared open research platform on well-being, making it easier for universities, civic partners, and businesses to work together. This spirit of co-creation ensures that our research and education remain connected to real-world needs.
EUniWell aims to operate in an open and boundless transnational education and research environment, in diverse bi- and multi-partner constellations. EUniWell communities of practice are hubs of collaboration to further the long-term vision for Alliance-wide cooperation on education, research, innovation, and societal engagement. They co-create new research avenues and successfully explore them bottom-up; they co-design new educational offers ranging from degree programmes to microcredential learning experiences; and they do so from an inherently multicultural European as well as global perspective.
The past five years have been extraordinary. They are made possible by the dedication of our member institutions, partners, colleagues, and students, and by the support of the European Commission and our national and regional funding organisations. This anniversary is a celebration of everything we have achieved together. We are excited to see what the next years – to 2030 and beyond – will bring. Along the way, we have grown, learned, and discovered what it means and what it takes to build communities for well-being. Now, as we celebrate, we also look ahead with energy and optimism. Come and join us as we continue the journey together!
