The University of Bologna Hosts the Coimbra Group Annual Conference: Universities and Cities United for a Sustainable Future

The Coimbra Group Annual Conference and General Assembly 2025, hosted by the University of Bologna from 10 to 13 June, comes to a close today.

Titled Forty Years of Impact: Universities and Cities Shaping a Sustainable Future, the conference reflected the Coimbra Group’s vision of universities working in synergy with their local territories and playing an active role in global transformation.

More than 300 participants - including rectors, academics, students, and administrative staff from member universities - gathered to reflect on today’s most pressing challenges, from the digital transition to environmental sustainability, from academic freedom to research funding, and from global cooperation to social justice.

In addition to multiple parallel sessions led by inter-university thematic groups, the conference featured several plenary discussions on critical international issues. On Wednesday 11 June, Professor Andrea Rinaldo (École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne and University of Padua) delivered a keynote titled Reflected in Water: Development, Resilience, Inequalities, focusing on socio-environmental inequalities related to water access and resource management. This was followed by the session From Durham to Bologna: The Climate Declaration, featuring Professor Karen O’Brien and Professor Daniel Donoghue (Durham University), which revisited and expanded upon the key points of the Durham Declaration, signed by Coimbra Group universities during the March symposium on climate and environmental justice in Durham.

Shifting from climate justice to socio-economic justice, Thursday morning featured a keynote by Professor Kum-Kum Bhavnani (UC Santa Barbara). Drawing on her work as a sociologist and her documentary films shot in various parts of the world, Professor Bhavnani emphasized the need to translate scientific and technological progress into tangible wellbeing for populations on a global scale.

University–city partnerships were at the heart of the roundtable of Rectors and Mayors on Empowering Local and Global Communities: from the Poitiers Declaration to the Future, held on Thursday morning. The session brought together the Deputy Mayor of Poitiers, the Mayors of Turku, Bologna, and Cesena, the Rector of the University of Turku, the Rectors of the Universities of Bologna and Granada, and the Vice-Rector in charge of European Strategy at the University of Poitiers. Their direct exchange focused on the strategic role of universities in sustainable urban development, in line with the principles of the Poitiers Declaration on university–city cooperation.

Also on 12 June, the conversation continued with the roundtable How to Handle Social Responsibility with the Alliances? dedicated to European university alliances. Representatives from eight alliances shared projects and best practices related to the social responsibility of academic communities.

The event concluded on Friday with the General Assembly, during which the Coimbra Group’s strategic priorities for 2025–2026 were reaffirmed and clarified. The network also welcomed three new member universities: the University of Leeds, Newcastle University, and the University of Wrocław.