This course introduces students to key concepts, research findings, and practical solutions for mitigating climate change. Through interdisciplinary lectures, discussions, and workshops, students explore how individual actions and societal decisions impact the environment and human systems. The course emphasizes understanding energy issues and broader sustainability challenges, equipping students to connect scientific knowledge with real-world climate protection strategies.
Online sessions: 04-03-2026 – 17-06-2026 (once a week)
This course equips students with advanced skills in analyzing climate data, evaluating impacts, and designing adaptation strategies. Through a combination of short lectures, practical data labs, project-based group work, and reflective discussions, students learn to assess regional and sectoral climate risks, develop climate impact profiles, and propose sustainable adaptation measures. The course emphasizes critical thinking, problem solving, and integrative learning, enabling students to interpret data, compare adaptation options, and communicate their findings effectively. By engaging with real-world data and international literature, participants gain hands-on experience in creating climate-resilient strategies aligned with sustainability goals.
This course explores the intersection of sport, tourism, and event management with a focus on sustainability. Students learn about current topics and research in sport event tourism, including stakeholder management, event legacies, and sustainable destination development. Through lectures, case studies, group projects, and participation in scientific symposia, students develop skills to critically analyze, apply, and communicate knowledge in real-world contexts. The course combines theoretical input with practical experiences to prepare students for managing sustainable events and sport tourism initiatives.
This course focuses on critically reflecting on one’s own work in terms of relevance, timeliness, authority, and usefulness within the context of sustainability and science communication. Students learn to gather, evaluate, and synthesize information from diverse sources, collaborate effectively in teams, provide constructive feedback, and present their research in an engaging and understandable way for non-experts, including supporting graphics. Additionally, students reflect on their own learning, identify strengths and weaknesses, and describe how their skills and understanding have developed over time.
Interdisciplinary Community Service Learning (iCSL) is a module that can be followed next to any Master’s programme and gives you the opportunity to work on real-life, current challenges.
You will be challenged to step outside your bubble and collaborate across (and beyond) the campus. As part of a cross-disciplinary student team, you will work closely with communities, companies, organisations, and government partners. Each team member addresses a different aspect of the broader societal challenge, drawing on their own disciplinary knowledge, insights, experience, and methods.
By reporting the outcomes back to the societal actors, you contribute to actual societal impact and drive positive transformations in society. After this course, you will be able to integrate knowledge and insights from different disciplines in order to produce results, insights, and solutions for various complex societal challenges that transcend disciplines and organisational barriers. You will develop (global) citizenship skills, such as critical thinking, problem solving and cultural understanding.
Practicalities
The course takes place between February and June 2026
Online part: 10 online meetings, starting in February
On-site part in Amsterdam: 25-29 May 2026
An English level of C1 is required for this course
There are 10 places available per Aurora university. In case we exceed the number of spots, students will be selected based on a ‘first come, first serve’ and their study background. There is no preferred study background, but there needs to be a balance in terms of disciplines represented in the course
Four Aurora universities, each located in a different region of Europe, unite with one shared goal: to explore and deepen understanding of linguistic diversity and plurilingualism-inspired pedagogical approaches.
This course exchanges best practices, resource-oriented strategies, and innovative approaches for plurilingual teaching and learning in higher education. It fosters the development of a European cultural identity grounded in the richness of multiple cultures. In doing so, it highlights language plurality and linguistic diversity as valuable assets for universities, staff, students, and society at large.
Are you a Bachelor’s, Master’s, or PhD student in Education, Humanities, or Social Sciences? This unique course is designed for you!
Language of instruction: English
Fees: No registration fee for Aurora students
Total places: 30 (20 for incoming students and 10 for URV students)
Nomination deadline: 27th February 2026
Application deadline: 16th March 2026
Before applying, students are strongly encouraged to contact their local Aurora office to inquire about available funding opportunities and to receive guidance on submitting their application.
Selection and Nomination Procedure
The programme is open to students from all Aurora partner universities; however, priority will be given to applicants from the organising institutions (UIBK, UPOL, UNINA and URV). Each Aurora university may nominate up to seven students.
A waiting list will be created on a first-come, first-served basis, again prioritising students from the organising institutions. Selected students will then be invited to submit their formal application to URV by 16th March 2026.
Digital ecosystems bring together organisations that collaborate and compete to meet customer needs. Famous examples include Google and Netflix, but ecosystems also shape sectors like fintech, energy, and automotive. This course explores how emerging digital technologies (especially blockchain) create disruption and new opportunities within such ecosystems.
Students learn key modelling and analysis methods (including e3value, BPMN, and UML) and apply them to design and evaluate an innovative ecosystem or platform. They will learn to identify disruptions, design and pitch ecosystem ideas, translate business needs to IT, work in teams, and create a strong report. The course does not require programming skills.
Practicalities
The course takes place between 3 February and 20 March 2026, with an exam on the 27th of March 2026.
The lectures takes place on Tuesdays from 11:00 – 12:45 and Fridays from 09:00 – 11:00.
An English level of C1 is required for this course.
Interested students can send an e-mail to shortmobility@vu.nl and will then receive the online application form. After acceptance and registration, a passport copy is requested for the enrollment of the students. The deadline to register is 6 January 2026.
CGMAI3022U Social Entrepreneurship and Business Model Innovation
Social Entrepreneurship describes the discovery and sustainable exploitation of opportunities to create business models which address humanity’s social and environmental challenges. Social entrepreneurship generates disequilibria in market and non-market environments, by finding ways of turning societal problems into complementary assets. The course will develop capabilities in social opportunity identification as well as social enterprise modeling.
Please note that due to its nature as a blended intensive programme (BIP) the course has several virtual components: Two obligatory “pre-assignment” online sessions (in early and mid June) in which you get introduced to the course and where group work begins. There are two weeks presence on-campus classes. Finally, the last week will again be online sessions at the end of the course in which we prepare for your exam project. These virtual sessions are an integral part of the course.
BHAAA2502U Permaculture: A Regenerative Solution for Business, Community and Lifestyle
The course will offer an introduction to the permaculture design framework as a tool for thinking innovatively and critically about sustainable and regenerative approaches to business, community and lifestyle.
‘Permaculture’ offers a holistic design framework for creating regenerative ways of living that aim to maximize beneficial relationships, through observing, emulating and working with rather than against nature (broadly defined) to enhance resilience, diversity, productivity and stability. The permaculture framework is increasingly being applied worldwide to support and inspire more sustainable lifestyles and communities, to improve biodiversity, energy efficiency, mental health, sanitize consumption, and design livable, humane social systems. Permaculture principles can be used foster responsible production and consumption through a whole-systems approach. In a business context, the principles have been applied to support sustainable business development and circularity; in communities they have been used to enhance wellbeing and strengthen social networks as well as alternative forms of social organization; and in lifestyles they have been used to inspire more humane and sustainable consumption, among others.
The course will address ways in which permaculture is being used to rethink the three course areas: i) business ii) community iii) lifestyle. Critical perspectives on permaculture will also be addressed.
BHAAI1097U An Introduction to Social Entrepreneurship
This course introduces students to organizational social entrepreneurship, a process by which opportunities to create public goods are identified and created. Being an “essentially contested concept” (Choi and Majumdar, 2014) social entrepreneurship is best understood as a cluster concept covering different applications ranging from the launching of social enterprise start-ups to the transformation of industry sectors towards sustainability. In the course we will analyze the antecedents of social entrepreneurship. An essential part of the course will be an introduction to core concepts of social entrepreneurship such as the theory of change, social impact measurement tools, and hybrid organizational form selection. To supplement academic learning with hands-on project experience students will work in teams on a specific social entrepreneurship problem.
Please note that due to its nature as a blended intensive programme (BIP) the course has several virtual components: Two obligatory “pre-assignment” online sessions (in early and mid June) in which you get introduced to the course and where group work begins. There are two weeks presence on-campus classes. Finally, the last week will again be online sessions at the end of the course in which we prepare for your exam project. These virtual sessions are an integral part of the course.
Online: 9, 16, 26 June, 2026 & 7 July 2026
On site: 22. June, 2026 – 09 July, 2026
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