Unpacking the role of the European Universities Initiative Alliances as a knowledge-power actor

Since the launch of the Lisbon strategy in 2000, the concept of Europe of knowledge has been a central focus in the European Union and its agenda for higher education policies, leading to changes in policies and strategies to advance European collaboration and global competition. This paper looks at how the polysemantic notion of ‘Europe of Knowledge’ has been embedded within European higher education against the backdrop of crises like Brexit, COVID-19, and Ukraine. It does so by focusing on the case of the European Universities Initiative (EUI), which includes transnational alliances across European Universities under three dimensions: (i) a shared, integrated, and long term strategy for education, linking research, innovation and societal impact; (ii) the creation of university campuses to facilitate mobility for students and staff across partner institutions; (iii) the implementation of "European-knowledge-creating" teams of students, stakeholders, and academics which collaborate together to address multidisciplinary challenges. By employing qualitative methodology and in-depth èlite interviews, the paper argues that the EUI can be characterized as a ‘knowledge-power’ actor which is materialized as a flow of people and services shaping and sharing ‘knowledge’ to tackle global crises and increase. The paper contributes to the panel by illustrating through an empirical case EU’s capacity in addressing crises by mobilizing specific types of ‘knowledge’.