Aurora in 2026: New Year Message from Aurora Secretary General Ramon Puras
Ramon Puras, Aurora Secretary General, meets 2026 with a message focused on major achievements in Aurora, future developments and gratitude to the Aurora community.
Looking back on 2025, Aurora continues to be a shared space to experiment, learn, and rethink how higher education institutions serve society.
Some of our key achievements as a community:
- International Peace Conference at the Universität Innsbruck
- Continued progress of Aurora 2030 and the successful completion of our mid-term review
- Presidents’ Meeting in Brussels, including a great exchange with Commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva
- Warm welcome of the Simon Fraser University as a new Aurora global member.
As we move into 2026, we aim to build on this momentum to:
- Further develop our Aurora 2030 alliance projects
- Sharpen our educational roadmap
- Expand collaboration with like-minded networks, such as the City Science Initiative
- Deepen our work with the University of Sussex, made even stronger by the renewed academic collaboration between the UK and the European Union.
Most of all, we would like to express gratitude to the Aurora community.
To our universities’ visionary Presidents and Vice-Rectors.
To our fantastic Institutional Coordinators.
To our Aurora Student Council, who keeps us abreast of our students’ needs.
To our Aurora Central Office team, the motor of Aurora.
To all academics, staff and students involved in Aurora.
Their commitment and energy make Aurora what it is.
Our 10 years together in Aurora is coming up! We will be marking this moment during the Aurora Annual Conference 2026 at the University of Duisburg-Essen from 19 to 22 May.
Ramon Puras
Aurora Secretary General
With our universities: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam), University of Iceland, University of Duisburg-Essen, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Universität Innsbruck, Università Federico II of Naples, Palacký University Olomouc, Université Paris-Est Créteil, Copenhagen Business School, Simon Fraser University, V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University, South-West University “Neofit Rilski”, Pavol Jozef Šafárik University in Košice and University of Tetova.