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Within the Aurora Universities, Communities of Practice (CoPs) are structured spaces where members from multiple institutions come together around a shared area of professional practice.1 The purpose of a CoP is to create an ongoing space for mutual learning, experimentation, and innovation across institutions and to live up to and experience the Aurora values Collaboration, Societal Change-Making and Sustainability. Each CoP must be rooted in a clearly defined professional and/or specialised area where members exchange experiences, develop joint initiatives, and strengthen institutional capacity.

By fostering these Communities of Practice, Aurora seeks to create a more interconnected, valuedriven, and innovative European higher education landscape – one where expertise is shared, institutional learning is accelerated, and collaboration becomes the norm rather than the exception.

Why create a Community of Practice?

Being part of a Community of Practice offers you a special opportunity of learning with and from likeminded participants, experts and professionals in an informal way, who work in the same field, enriching your knowledge and insights. You want to be part of a Community of Practice, because you have a passion about something, you care about a certain issue or have a particular interest in a certain task or practice.

Furthermore, creating a Community of Practice comes with the possibility of getting more visibility and recognition for what you and we all are doing. Moreover, it may inspire others to enact the Aurora values of Collaboration, Societal Change-Making and Sustainability in their specific domain.

An example could be to create a Community of Practice existing of scientists/scholars and students as well as support staff, who share a common concern, a set of problems or research questions, or an interest in a scientific topic with local communities and other organisations.

How does it work?

To qualify as an Aurora CoP, a group must include active participants from at least three different Aurora universities. While some CoPs may grow out of existing structures, such as work packages or task teams, others may emerge more organically from informal professional networks (for example, among EU grant officers, mobility coordinators, library specialists, permagarden practitioners) or out of student bodies. However, a CoP goes beyond an existing work package team, task team or project, since their members already work together in a structured manner.

Each Community of Practice must establish a basic governance structure. This includes the appointment of a lead and a vice-lead, both selected preferably for a period of two to three years (or if possible with an overlap of the terms of the lead and the vice-lead to ensure a degree of continuity, and if feasible with the intention of the vice-lead succeeding the lead). These individuals are responsible for coordinating the CoP activities, serving as the main point of contact with Aurora’s Institutional Coordinators and Task Team 9.3 Aurora Values. CoPs are formally established for a three-year term, after which they can renew to maintain their status within Aurora.

To remain active, a CoP must organise and document at least one activity per calendar year. This may include workshops, seminars, peer-learning sessions, collaborative publications, or other professional development formats.

Members interested in initiating or joining a Community of Practice are encouraged to consult Aurora Central Office for support in identifying possible partners and drafting a short CoP proposal. The proposal should outline the practice focus, list participating institutions and contacts, propose a first planned activity, and confirm the governance roles (see Sign-up Sheet).

Annual ‘Community of Practice Awards’

Participation in a CoP offers members the opportunity to collaborate with colleagues from across Europe and beyond, learn from diverse institutional contexts, experiment with new tools or processes, and contribute to the overall mission of Aurora. In recognition of this work, Aurora will launch a Community of Practice Award program, tentatively with the first awards to be presented at the Aurora Annual Conference in May 2026. These awards will highlight certain CoPs that have made outstanding contributions to advancing Aurora values in practice, whether through innovation, inclusion, or cross-institutional impact. A separate document sets out the procedure and structure for that.

A Guide for Aurora members and Institutional Coordinators

Registered CoPs

Permahaven Research Group (PRG)
“The Permahaven Research Group (PRG) advances sustainability education through applied, experiential learning in permaculture-oriented urban gardens. These living laboratories connect students, staff, and community members across Aurora universities and public spaces, translating sustainability theory into collaborative practice. By working in shared gardens, participants address real ecological and social challenges while learning with and from diverse age groups and communities, fostering social capital, civic engagement, and societal change-making. PRG activities exemplify Aurora’s values of collaboration, sustainability, and societal impact by creating cross-institutional learning spaces that extend beyond classrooms into local communities. The gardens function as hubs for peer learning, experimentation, and innovation, enabling participants to co-develop practical responses to environmental and social issues. Impact is evidenced by growing participation across institutions, sustained community involvement, and the publication of an academic book documenting the process and lessons of developing a university-based permaculture garden as a transferable model for experiential sustainability education.”
Peace in Practice Across Universities

“This Community of Practice brings together Aurora partners to co-create research, teaching, and engagement on peace and global citizenship. Guided by an inclusive, consultative governance model, Dr. Marije Luitjens leads with co-leads Oleksandr Khyzhniak and Selma Porobic, jointly shaping the annual programme and agenda. We meet in person when Aurora events allow, including the 2025 Aurora Peace Conference and the 2026 Symposium on Global Citizenship, and maintain regular online meetings, such as for the upcoming Convention. Our work reflects Aurora values: collaboration through co-designed learning modules, shared case studies, and exchanges of staff and students, including guest lectures (e.g., Dr. Luitjens in March); societal change-making via policy dialogues, public seminars, and student challenge labs on conflict, democratic participation, and intercultural understanding, research and exchange on peace education; and sustainability by linking peacebuilding to social resilience and responsible futures. This year we will host internal workshops, joint research seminars, and teaching activities involving Aurora colleagues and students, aligned with the VU Rector Magnificus’ Peace Agenda and the UNESCO Chairs, reinforcing shared European peace priorities and long-term cooperation.”

Supporting Doctoral Researchers and Supervisors
Guided by the core Aurora value of Collaboration, this proposed Community of Practice will leverage the Aurora Universities´ collective expertise in supporting the professional development of doctoral researchers and their supervisors. Open to all Aurora academic and administrative staff supporting doctoral education, the CoP will organize at least one event per year to exchange best practices and explore possibilities for greater cooperation within the network such as professional development workshops and supervisor trainings. In doing so, the CoP could help lay the groundwork for a possible work package on support for doctoral researchers and supervisors within an eventual new Erasmus+ bid, should Aurora decide to go in that direction.
The seizmic Community of Practice: Social Entrepreneurship Education, Impact Competencies, and Systemic Change
The seizmic Community of Practice brings together academics, doctoral researchers, students, and professional staff working on social entrepreneurship education, impact competencies, and system-level change across Aurora universities. Building on the seizmic ecosystem (short-term mobility courses, digital learning tools, learning experience monitoring, student awards, and the doctoral network), the CoP provides a shared space for mutual learning, experimentation, and reflection on how social entrepreneurship competencies are taught, assessed, and translated into societal impact. The CoP explicitly advances Aurora values by fostering deep cross-institutional collaboration, developing educational practices that address grand societal challenges, and promoting sustainability-oriented entrepreneurship education. Rather than focusing on project delivery, the CoP centres on shared professional practice: designing, testing, comparing, and refining pedagogical, digital, and evaluative approaches to social entrepreneurship education within and beyond Aurora.
Co-Creating Global Education: The Aurora Internationalisation of the Curriculum CoP
“Internationalisation of the Curriculum (IoC) is an educational approach that integrates global perspectives, intercultural understanding, and transnational competence into the design, delivery, and assessment of teaching and learning. (Leask, 2015). “The potential benefits of IoC, (are addressed) especially towards making internationalisation more sustainable and relevant. IoC intends to facilitate a shift from the narrow focus of internationalisation on mobility to learning and the curriculum, which ideally can engage all students in critical conversations about local and global issues (Leask, 2015; Whitsed et al., 2024).” This CoP is integrated by academics, educational developers, internationalisation experts and Aurora students. The IoC CoP intends to identify and propose solutions to the challenges we face, as well as to share, enhance, and better disseminate the good practices and opportunities that can help us fully embed IoC into Aurora 2030 teaching and learning practices, for both current and future joint projects, collaborative teaching, and research. ”
INSIGHTS
The Community of Practice INSIGHTS unites the University of Naples Federico II, the University of Innsbruck, and the Universitat Rovira i Virgili around the characterization and exploitation of insect-derived materials as ingredients for food, feed, and as tools for sustainable agricultural production and crop protection. The partners integrate expertise in optimization of insect cultivation, insect microbiome analysis, insect frass valorization for crop production and protection, and molecular bioactivity of insect-based foods in human health. Anchored in the Aurora values of Collaboration and Sustainability, our CoP will on one side facilitate knowledge exchange and joint learning and dissemination initiatives across member universities. On the other, complementary, side, by consolidating interdisciplinary strengths, INSIGHTS will provide a platform to foster an interconnected, innovation-driven research space aimed at increasing the sustainability of agriculture and the food production system. The activities of our CoP will be documented through workshops, seminars, peer-learning sessions and collaborative publications.
LOUIS: Learning Outcomes in University for Impact on Society
“LOUIS focuses on the students’ development of transversal competences as part of their university studies. LOUIS offers a tool and language to articulate what competences teachers want students to develop and to describe desired or demonstrated performance in these competences. The LOUIS community of practice is a group of teachers using the LOUIS tool and helping each other and new entrants to improve their teaching and their students’ learning. LOUIS has active groups in majority of Aurora universities (UIBK, UIce, UPOL, UDE, UNINA, VU), and individual members at remaining universities (CBS, URV, UPEC); it organizes training sessions as part of larger Aurora events and stand-alone Blended Intensive Programmes (i.e. BIPs). LOUIS works in the core of the Aurora vision of matching academic excellence with societal relevance and the Aurora mission to ensure that Aurora graduates have both the ability and the mindset to help address societal challenges. ”
Low-Dimensional Materials for Advanced (Bio)Sensing
“This Community of Practice (CoP) focuses on low-dimensional materials, with emphasis on two-dimensional (2D) systems such as MXenes for advanced (bio)sensing applications. The emerging class of MXenes, including Ti₃C₂Tₓ, exhibits high electrical conductivity, hydrophilicity, and tunable surface chemistry, making it highly suitable for next-generation (bio)sensing platforms. The CoP aims to establish a structured and sustainable collaboration among Aurora universities in the synthesis, characterization, functionalization, and integration of 2D materials into electrochemical and hybrid sensing devices. It promotes interdisciplinary cooperation among materials scientists, chemists, physicists, engineers, and bioelectronics researchers. By sharing expertise, research infrastructures, and methodologies, the CoP strengthens research capacity within Aurora, fosters mobility and joint initiatives, and contributes to societal change through accessible and sustainable sensing technologies for healthcare, food safety, and environmental monitoring. The CoP supports long-term transnational collaboration fully aligned with Aurora values. ”
Aurora Research Support
“The establishment of a Community of Practice (CoP) addresses this gap by providing a sustainable framework for ongoing cooperation. Its primary aim is to build on existing trust, knowledge, and experience to strengthen support for researcher communities and foster research synergies across Aurora universities. To achieve this, the CoP will focus on practical collaboration activities, including matchmaking, sharing funding and partnership opportunities, and further development of the Aurora Research Support Platform. The group will meet at least once a year onsite, complemented by additional online meetings depending on the scope of activities. In parallel, the CoP will contribute to the recognition and professionalisation of research management, in alignment with the European Research Area (ERA) Action on Research Management, in which Aurora is actively engaged through participation in the Core Group.”
South-South and Triangular Cooperation on Food Systems and Climate Change (SSTC- FSCC)
“South-South and Triangular Cooperation on Food Systems and Climate Change (SSTC-FSCC) is a university-led, multi-stakeholder Community of Practice (CoP) focused on addressing the complex societal challenges related to food systems, climate change and linked topics. The primary focus of this collaboration is to advance evidence-based higher education and inter- and trans-disciplinary research, with the aim of contributing to the transformation towards sustainable, resilient and just food systems. Initially established informally in 2021 following an exploratory assignment commissioned by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) to VU Amsterdam, the SSTC-FSCC CoP has expanded progressively in terms of geographic coverage (28 members over 17 countries), thematic areas (e.g. health and social entrepreneurship, futures and foresight), and member typology (incl. industry/private sector, Agricultural Knowledge and Innovation Systems as well as research and innovation organisations). The SSTC-FSCC CoP promotes mutual learning, knowledge co-creation and the inclusion of diverse knowledge systems. Within the framework of Aurora 2030, this CoP conducts activities under T4.3 South-South and Triangular Cooperation in research and education. This task enables Aurora to extend its outreach beyond the traditional Euro-American axis and to act as a bridge for building sustainable and mutually beneficial partnerships among universities across Europe, Africa, Latin America and, prospectively, South-East Asia. The Task encourages the use of innovative teaching and research methodologies, including Real-Life Learning Labs (RLLL) and Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL), thereby contributing to societal transformation, collaboration and sustainability. As partners in the Global South are not eligible for EU funding under Aurora 2030, the work carried out so far has largely relied on the voluntary engagement and institutional commitment of CoP members, complemented by support from related initiatives, projects and programmes, including FAO-SSTC programme, Erasmus + CBHE INSSPIRE project in Kenya and Uganda, Erasmus staff mobility programme KA171. ”