Aarhus University Seal

Educating for and with the city

On 18-19 December 2019, Director of Centre for Higher Education Futures, Professor Sue Wright joined an international gathering of educators in Bilbao to share ideas about ‘educating for and with the city’.

Monika Madinabeitia Medrano, Aitor Zuberogoitia Espilla and Beñat Flores with Sue Wright.
Mondragon University organisers of ‘Univercity: educating for and with the city’: Monika Madinabeitia Medrano, Aitor Zuberogoitia Espilla and Beñat Flores with Sue Wright.

The event was organized by the humanities faculty of the cooperative Mondragon University. Mondragon is joining a new Bilbao campus as part of the municipal council’s strategy for universities to play a lead role in the city’s cultural and economic revival.

In Mondragon’s rural area, research and education have always been closely tied into the cooperative system, currently consisting of 250 companies employing 74,000 people. How to translate that experience into an entirely new, city context? By designing a new critical and digital humanities degree.

In a well structured programme over two days, educators from USA, Belgium, UK and Denmark worked with Mondragon faculty and Bilbao city administrators to combine their ideas and experience on the role of the university in the city, students’ engaged research and educational projects on heritage and community memory.

As a member of the Scientific Board for the new degree, Sue Wright is continuing to work on ideas about cooperative education.