What is YERUN?
YERUN is a network of 23 young European research universities with similar features, goals, and challenges. The University of Potsdam has been a member since 2022. The network is coordinated by an office in Brussels, which carries out important science policy advocacy for young research universities and manages collaborations among the network’s partners.
What does the network stand for?
YERUN regards itself as the voice of its members within the European higher education area, fostering collaboration in research, teaching, and higher education policy. The network aims to increase the competitiveness and visibility of young universities, promote innovative research, and encourage international networking among students and researchers.
What exactly do you do together?
Members of the network share best practices in working groups, collaborate on joint research projects, and develop innovative teaching methods. In addition, there are also joint blended intensive programs as part of Erasmus+, for example. A summer school with the title Engaged Research Design for Sustainability will take place in Limerick in 2025. There is also an associated participation of the University of Potsdam as part of a project proposal on AI in Teaching. Last but not least, the network brings together students, employees, and researchers of the universities through various mobility formats. For example, young academics can receive funding for an application to initiate a joint project through the Research Mobility Awards. The call for applications for the next round will be launched in fall 2024.
How does the University of Potsdam benefit?
The network repeatedly brings best practices to our doorstep and allows us to exchange our ideas about current issues that concern everyone. Regular participation in the newsletter „What’s up at Young Universities“ gives the University of Potsdam the opportunity to present new projects and accomplishments on previously defined topics. The University of Potsdam also benefited from both the Open Science Awards and the Research Mobility Awards and has raised funds in all of the calls for proposals.
What is currently on your agenda?
Another major project that will be launched this fall is Connect by YERUN – a networking platform for researchers that is based on ORCID data. The platform is intended to connect researchers directly with each other and support them in finding EU funding programs, which are displayed to precisely fit users’ profiles. Universities also benefit from the platform as it displays their research expertise, their participation in EU-funded projects, ongoing collaborations, and joint publications with other YERUN members.
„A Europe in Practice“
The KoUP Program provides „seed money“ for the promotion of international research cooperations
Dr. Peter Ulrich, Academic Director of the Institute of Local Government Studies (KWI) at the University of Potsdam, initiated a project together with researchers from the University of Maastricht in 2023 – with the help of KoUP funding. “Due to this support, I was able to conduct a 'shadowing' at the University of Maastricht in May 2023. In September 2023, a scientist from Maastricht then came to Potsdam for a workshop,” Ulrich explains. This resulted in a joint publication and an application for third-party funding. He sees funding such as that from the KoUP program as an important instrument for strengthening European networks at one’s own institute. “Like the YERUN network, which means interregional and inter-university exchange, scientific collaboration, and internationality – a Europe in practice.”
Short trip, big impact
Potsdam speech and language pathologist Kristien Meuris conducted research in Odense thanks to YERUN Mobilities
Kristien Meuris wants to make sure that people can talk to each other. Even those who can’t “just chat away” and need support to do so. The speech therapist is researching so-called assisted communication. She traveled to Denmark in March 2023 to learn and test a special research method. This was possible due to a mobility grant from the YERUN network. “It was about a specific method of analyzing video data: conversation analysis. The university in Odense has a decades-long tradition in this field and has now achieved exceptional expertise,” she explains. “During my stay, I received very important feedback and took exciting questions with me, but I also made a lot of contacts.”
Opening Research for All
YERUN Open Science Awards for the University of Potsdam
To strengthen the open science idea, the YERUN network presents the Open Science Awards. In 2024, two of the five awards went to the University of Potsdam. The awards went to the Global History Dialogues (GHD) teaching project by historian Prof. Dr. Marcia Schenck and the Digital Humanities Project Drama Corpora Project (DraCor), which is being developed and conducted at the University of Potsdam together with Freie Universität Berlin. In 2023, the Theodor Fontane Archive had already received an Open Science Award.
This text (in german language) was published in the university magazine Portal - Zwei 2024 „Europa“ (PDF).