For students and staff across the EMERGE European University Alliance, mobility offers more than the opportunity to study or work in another country. It creates opportunities to experience different academic environments, meet people from different backgrounds, and build connections across the regions that make up the Alliance.
Mobility sits at the heart of EMERGE’s objective of Connecting the Margins. As the Alliance develops physical, blended, and virtual mobility opportunities, the ambition is to widen participation and make mobility accessible in different formats, for people with different circumstances and needs.
But the value of mobility is best understood through the experiences of the people who take part.
From Limerick to Banská Bystrica: two views of the same BIP
Abid Ramay, a postgraduate psychology student and student representative at the University of Limerick, went to a Blended Intensive Programme in Banská Bystrica expecting workshops and left with a different question entirely. During a group session on supporting international students, his team’s early focus on how students should adapt to their institution flipped midway through: “How can institutions adapt better to students?” That reframing, he says, sparked a longer conversation about shared responsibility and structural change, and captured for him what the Alliance is meant to do. “Growth begins where certainty ends,” he reflects.
Fiona O’Kearney, staff at UL Global, made the same trip and led a workshop on social media marketing. What stayed with her longest wasn’t the session she delivered but the Culture Village that followed, an evening where each delegation presented their country’s traditions under the open sky above Banská Bystrica’s City Hall. She joined a Greek dance, learned the story behind an Italian meme from a fellow participant, and watched two Irish colleagues teach the group a phrase of Irish. “The exchange of ideas, teaching methods, and cultural perspectives enriches everyone involved,” she says, “and helps build long-lasting academic relationships.”
From Thrace to Limerick: finding a voice in a new language
For Argiro Kalpaki, a student in the Department of Primary Education at the Democritus University of Thrace, the hardest part of her BIP at the University of Limerick wasn’t the coursework. It was the prospect of presenting in English in front of people she’d just met. That nervousness became the pivotal moment itself: standing up, working through a group presentation, she found she could hold her own. “I could easily express my ideas, develop my arguments, and actively contribute to the team,” she says. Her advice to anyone hesitating over language is direct: the fear is smaller than it seems once you’re actually in the room.
From Banská Bystrica to A Coruña: new perspectives
For Pavla Bulinová, a second-year law student at Matej Bel University, mobility to Universidade da Coruña became an opportunity for both academic and personal development. Evening walks along the Spanish coast with classmates from other countries reshaped how she thinks about cultural difference, not as a hurdle but as something worth paying attention to. “This experience taught me the importance of respect, open-mindedness and communication, especially when interacting with people who have different opinions,” she reflects. The mobility also clarified her academic direction: through her classes at UDC, law became not just her degree but the field she wants to build a career in. For Pavla, the value of mobility went beyond the time spent abroad. “It broadens your horizons and helps you better understand yourself and others,” she says.
From A Coruña to Lillehammer: adjusting to a different pace
Ignacio Vidal Patiño, a student in Tourism and Business Science at the University of A Coruña, traded Spain’s faster social rhythm for six months in Lillehammer, where the pace and structure took getting used to before they became the point. Group trips with fellow Erasmus students turned into some of his strongest memories: driving for hours between fjords, stopping in small towns, chasing the northern lights when the sky cooperated. Norway isn’t always the first country students picture when they think Erasmus, he admits, but that’s precisely the case for going. It offers experiences you probably wouldn’t have anywhere else.
(Note: Ignacio’s testimonial was submitted in Spanish. The quotes above are translated and paraphrased, not verbatim.)
Beyond student mobility: building professional connections
Mobility within EMERGE also extends to academic and professional staff. Achilleas Karagiannis, a professor at the School of Economics, Business and Computer Science at Neapolis University Pafos, took his mobility to Europa-Universität Flensburg, Germany’s northernmost city, to teach on the MSc in International Management. His visits connected closely with his own research interests in organisational psychology and development, innovation and sustainability, but what struck him most was how thoroughly he was folded into daily academic life. His academic host, Dr Tanja Reimer, supported him from the practical arrangements before his arrival to welcoming him into her home. For Achilleas, that personal dimension was inseparable from the wider purpose of the Alliance: visiting Flensburg gave him a direct, hands-on understanding of what it means to connect universities across the margins of Europe under one common framework.
A lived European community
These experiences are different, but they point to the same thing. The value of EMERGE mobility does not stop with attending classes or delivering a workshop. It creates opportunities to develop intercultural skills, build lasting relationships, encounter different academic approaches, and gain a stronger understanding of the diversity within Europe.
This is also the direction of EMERGE’s mobility strategy: short-term, blended, and virtual formats alongside traditional physical exchanges, and a growing library of first-hand testimonials to give future participants a clearer picture of what they stand to gain.
From Banská Bystrica to A Coruña, from Thrace to Limerick, from Lillehammer to Flensburg, the experiences of EMERGE participants show why mobility sits at the heart of the Alliance’s ambition to connect its universities, regions, and communities. Through every journey, a student or staff member brings something from their home university and takes something new back with them.
That is how a network of universities becomes a lived European community.