Una Europa Podcast

Citizen Science Podcast #4 | Mini-Publics: Citizens Strengthening Democracy

inga.odenthal@una-europa.eu (Marcin Zubek, Simon Rienäcker, Friedel Grant) — Wed, 1 Apr 2026 08:48:46 +0000

Our Citizen Science podcast series takes you on a tour across our 11 partner universities. Explore a new campus each episode and talk to members of our Una Europa community, to active citizens, volunteers and experts. They tell us more about their involvement with citizen science projects that want to make positive, impactful contributions to their local communities, cities, countries or Europe.

Our fourth episode is an interview with Dr. Marcin Zubek, a political scientist at the Institute of European Studies at Una Europa partner Uniwersytet Jagielloński w Krakówie. Marcin specialises in foreign policy and, as a member of our Europe and the World Focus Area, helped design and now teaches as part of the Una Europa Joint Bachelor in European Studies. Marcin was a researcher in REGROUP (Rebuilding Governance and Resilience out of the Pandemic), a Horizon Europe project that brought together experts from across Europe to advise the EU on the social, political and institutional challenges created by Covid-19. By studying how the pandemic opened doors for change, REGROUP explored how the EU can become fairer, stronger and more effective.

A central method for REGROUP was the use of mini-publics: small, randomly selected groups of citizens chosen to reflect the wider population and given time and balanced information on the project’s three focus points — knowledge, information and trust. Five partner universities hosted local or national mini-publics, and Marcin explains how the Kraków event was organised. Despite some logistical hurdles, the participants developed concrete policy recommendations for educational and participatory reforms. As a follow-up, REGROUP organised a larger transnational mini-public in Brussels that included randomly selected participants from the local events. Multilingualism posed its own challenges, but the group managed constructive debates on disinformation and science communication at the EU level, calling for clear, reliable information and greater transparency from EU policymakers. Overall, participants from both local and transnational events reported feeling empowered that their views could meaningfully contribute to policy debates.

Find out more about the REGROUP mini-publics on YouTube.

Episode Guest

Dr. Marcin Zubek

Series Editors

Friedel Grant, Universiteit Leiden
Simon Rienäcker, Freie Universität Berlin

Our Una Europa podcast series takes you on a tour across our eleven partner universities. We will meet a new campus each episode and talk to members of our Una Europa community, to active citizens, volunteers and experts. They tell us about their involvement in citizen science projects that aim to make positive, impactful contributions to their local communities, cities, countries, and Europe at large.

As we present their stories, you can learn from fellow citizens and find out more about European cities and our Una Europa universities from perspectives that might be new to you. Our podcast series is a great way to improve your knowledge on special topics through our expert interviews.

Citizen Science Podcast #3 | The Environmental Impact of Water and Hydrological Data

Wed, 18 Jun 2025 23:00:00 +0000

In this third episode we take you to Universität Zürich to meet different experts and citizen scientists. The city of Zürich is host to a wide range of citizen science projects. We get to know the initiative “Citizen Science Zürich” which has Universität Zürich as one of its main partners and acts as a crucial player in connecting academics and citizen scientists. Olivia Höhener tells us about the activities of "Citizen Science Zürich", some of its funded projects, and how they support early-career researchers who want to integrate citizen science approaches into their own research projects.

Our episode also takes a closer look at CrowdWater – an app designed to collect data on rivers, lakes, and other bodies of water in a way that is accessible and easy to use for everyone. We meet three people who have been involved with the CrowdWater research project and its app at different stages in their career, from writing a master’s thesis, researching a PhD project, to being a citizen scientist: Franziska Clerc-Schwarzenbach, Bret Leslie, and Sara Blanco Ramirez will tell us about their engagement with citizen science overall and CrowdWater in particular. They present fascinating insights into how a research project can involve various stakeholders – from individual citizens, groups of school children, to academics and many more – and how these people collect data that can create a noticeable impact on the environment locally and globally. The CrowdWater app is available in 22 languages and you can start contributing today.

This episode of our podcast might be interesting to early-career researchers in particular as our experts tell us about the impact that citizen science approaches can have on PhD projects and how early-career researchers can connect during summer schools and other outreach events.

Episode Guests

Sara Blanco Ramirez
Franziska Clerc-Schwarzenbach
Olivia Höhener
Bret Leslie

Series Editors

Friedel Grant, Universiteit Leiden
Simon Rienäcker, Freie Universität Berlin

Citizen Science Podcast #2 | Introducing Citizen Science

Fri, 9 May 2025 07:05:30 +0000

We launched our Una Europa Citizen Science Podcast series with an episode about a project in the city of Leuven, Belgium, where a team of experts and citizens are working to improve live-saving measures in case of medical emergencies. In this second episode, we take a step back and look at some of the fundamental aspects of citizen science:

How can citizens become co-designers of research projects?
How is data produced, collected and evaluated?
How can people benefit from citizen science projects?
How can these projects help citizens come to terms with their environment?

Una Europa has a great resource to go into detail with each of these questions: the Citizen Science Toolkit.

This podcast episode is a compilation of highlights from some of the interviews of our Una Europa citizen science experts, to give you a starting point to learn more about citizen science as an academic practice and research method. If you are already experienced with citizen science and its basic principles, you might still be interested in the unique citizen projects our experts are involved in. If you are a member of our academic community, this episode is your chance to get to know researchers who work on topics that might interest you or on which you are conducting research.

This podcast episode offers a unique viewpoint which explores practices that can be characterised as citizen science which date back over a hundred years. An expert from Helsingin yliopisto/Helsingfors universitet, Finland, gives more insight into the history of citizen science through the lens of bird ringing, which has been going on in Finland since 1913.

Episode Guests

Fabrice Langrognet, Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne
Alicia Castillo Mena, Universidad Complutense de Madrid
Eljas Oksanen, Helsingin yliopisto/Helsingfors universitet
Francesca Sabatini, Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna
Antje Wilton, Freie Universität Berlin
Jari Valkama, Helsingin yliopisto/Helsingfors universitet and Luomus – Natural History Museum

Episode Editors

Alexis Engrand, Helsingin yliopisto/Helsingfors universitet

Series Editors

Friedel Grant, Universiteit Leiden
Simon Rienäcker, Freie Universität Berlin

Una Europa Podcast Student Special | Insights from the Joint Bachelor in European Studies

Fri, 28 Mar 2025 14:14:10 +0000

This Una Europa student podcast episode dives into the lives of three students of the pioneering Una Europa Joint Bachelor in European Studies (BAES) — Michele (second year), Camilla (third year) and Agnieszka (third year) — as they share their personal experiences living and studying in Leuven, Belgium. They give first-hand insights into their BAES journey and discuss both the perks and challenges of their unique academic programme.

The Una Europa Joint Bachelor of Arts in European Studies is a highly innovative programme, built on values of multidisciplinarity, internationality, and multilingualism. BAES students study fundamental aspects and values of the European Union, reflecting on the role of Europe in the world and mastering research skills to analyse key issues related to European societies.

Our three speakers in this podcast episode discuss various aspects of being a BAES student, such as mobility, interdisciplinarity, and adapting to new countries and cultures. They share practical tips on finding housing, making friends, and staying connected while constantly moving. From trying new sports to juggling student jobs, they highlight what Leuven has to offer above and beyond the academic part of student life. Fancy some (virtually) free beer and fries? Tune in!

Recorded in November 2024, this podcast episode is the result of a student-led initiative of Una.lliance, the Una Europa Local Student Task Force at KU Leuven. For official information on the BAES, please refer to the programme website.

Citizen Science Podcast #1 | From Bystander to Hero

Tue, 15 Oct 2024 14:22:23 +0000

Leuven is a neighbouring city of Belgium’s capital Brussels. It is a city with historical grandeur still visible today in its architecture. And Leuven is a modern and buzzing city, not least because around 50.000 students are living there who make up roughly one third of the city’s population.

In this episode we want to talk about a very important topic: medical emergencies, and in particular out-of-hospital cardiac arrests. Belgium sees 10.000 people each year suffering cardiac arrest, and the country is slower to respond in these emergencies than some other EU member states. Our Una Europa partner university KU Leuven, who is preparing for its 600-year anniversary in 2025, launched a competition and asked students, staff and the citizens of Leuven to vote on a project which most adequately shows the importance of science for society. The selected project is called “From Bystander to Hero” and it brings together researchers, medical experts and volunteer citizens to improve the first responder system in case of medical emergencies. Listen to this episode and learn more about the project and why citizen engagement is crucial for its success. And find out how you can make a difference in medical emergencies.

Episode Guests

Episode Editors

Helena Custers, KU Leuven
Inga Odenthal. KU Leuven

Series Editors

Friedel Grant, Universiteit Leiden
Simon Rienäcker, Freie Universität Berlin

Una Europa Podcast #13 on students as change-makers

Tue, 25 Oct 2022 07:00:00 +0000

Students are at the core of everything we do at Una Europa, and 2022 has seen many milestones supporting and strengthening our commitment to offering unique joint opportunities for our student community. In September we welcomed the first cohort to the Una Europa Joint BA in European Studies, while in the summer we delivered the first Una Europa Summer School, two weeks of team-building, problem-solving and skills development in the area of One Health. As we move into Autumn our student community looks ahead, with the next Student Congress, "A Step Closer to the University of the Future", welcoming the next iteration of our Student Board and the wealth of ideas they have for how we can better work with and for our student community.

Brian and Christiana, two representatives from the Student Board, offer perspectives on harnessing the energy of students and the value of including them at all levels of university governance. We then highlight the impact of Una Europa in our university communities with Marco, a member of the Una Europa local taskforce at Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna. The episode finishes with Tamara, who attended the first Una Europa Summer School in One Health and felt the energy and vision of our community over two inspiring weeks at the University of Edinburgh.

Una Europa Podcast #12 on promoting diversity, equity and social justice

Mon, 10 Oct 2022 17:06:07 +0000

As a community of 11 European universities from disparate cultural and institutional backgrounds, plurality is a cornerstone of the Una Europa alliance. But to ensure that all members of our community can fully participate and experience a sense of belonging in our alliance, we must be committed not only to enabling social diversity but to advancing equity and inclusion. This means dismantling barriers that contribute to exclusion among marginalised groups and promoting social justice.

In this episode, we explore what we mean by the multifaceted term 'diversity', what it means in an Una Europa context, and some of the practical ways we're working towards the goals of equity and inclusion as an alliance.

We speak to Gabi Rosenstreich, who gives us an insight into the work of the Una Europa Diversity Council. We also explore Una.Together with a group of students who took part in the programme earlier this year. Una.Together challenged students to join forces in intercultural and interdisciplinary teams to advance the inclusion of diverse student bodies in our universities.

Una Europa Podcast #11 on the Live My Life job-shadowing programme

Thu, 7 Jul 2022 08:00:00 +0000

The first cohort of Live My Life participants included representation from eight Una Europa partners and came from four key working areas: alumni, library, press and communications and staff development/ international office. 56 colleagues completed staff mobility under Live My Life in the Spring/ Summer of 2022. Helsinki to Edinburgh; Paris to Madrid; Kraków to Berlin - our staff members travelled all across Europe for a uniquely enriching opportunity for professional development!

The eleventh episode of the Una Europa podcast is jam-packed full of speakers from all stops on the Live My Life journey - from the pairs brought together through the programme to the people coordinating the initiative from behind the scenes. Listen to hear personal insights from the programme, the value of learning outside of your own "office", and the new skills and connections developed through peer-to-peer learning.

Una Europa Podcast #10 on combining learning and acting for sustainability

Wed, 9 Mar 2022 17:16:13 +0000

While universities might not be the most readily adaptable to change, they have a unique position at the intersection of research, education, and societal impact. This gives universities the opportunity to push for change, by educating and engaging students to become leaders for a more sustainable future and by taking our valuable research and applying it concretely to society. We need new educational formats, such as the Una Europa micro-qualification on sustainability and the Climate University, to implement new pedagogies and learning methodologies. We need to not only think of transferring knowledge but also allowing students to put that knowledge into practice right away. Finally, we need to remain lifelong learners and understand that we all have a role to play, right now.

In this tenth episode of the Una Europa podcast we meet Jaakko Kurhila, Chief Digital Officer at the University of Helsinki; Laura Riuttanen, University Lecturer in Atmospheric Sciences at the University of Helsinki and coordinator of the Climate University and the Una Europa Micro-qualification in sustainability; and Wilhelm Blomberg, an environmental activist and student of educational sciences at the University of Helsinki. Our three guests discuss key issues in climate education, sustainability and learning, and provide their best advice for how universities can lead efforts for a more sustainable future.

Una Europa Podcast #9 on our One Health community

Fri, 21 Jan 2022 07:00:00 +0000

The health of humans, animals, other organisms and the environment are inextricably linked. As proven by the Covid-19 pandemic, health challenges that stem from the complex interaction between humans, animals, plants and ecosystems call for a review of existing concepts and methods. Tighter collaboration across sectors and disciplines - life sciences, public health and social sciences - is crucial. The diverse range of One Health expertise from across the Una Europa partners carries tremendous potential to deliver high-quality initiatives in education, research and social engagement at large.

The ninth episode of the Una Europa podcast consists of a discussion between Assistant Professor Annamari Heikinheimo, of Helsingin Yliopisto/ Helsinfors Universitet and Dr. Alexandra Soulier, of Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. The discussion is moderated by Dr. Yasmin Abdulla, a research assistant at the University of Edinburgh. Our three speakers explore the hot topic of antimicrobial resistance: how it exemplifies One Health, and the importance of interdisciplinarity to effective, impactful research.

Una Europa Podcast #8 on the Student Congress

inga.odenthal@una-europa.eu (Lovina Okonkwo, Louise Girard, Marco Reyes-Bernal) — Wed, 8 Dec 2021 11:00:00 +0000

The second Una Europa Student Congress "Una for Future. The Sustainable University." took place on 20 and 21 October 2021, hosted by Universidad Complutense de Madrid. The congress brought together students from all eight Una Europa partner universities to collaborate and shape the idea of a European university of the future, with a focus on creating sustainability on campus. Want to know more? Hear from three student who attended the Congress in Madrid in podcast #8!

The hybrid format of the event allowed some students to attend the Congress in person, with those who missed out on the opportunity of the usual physical mobility opportunities offered by their university jumping on the chance to spend time abroad and practice their language skills. Students who were not able to travel to Madrid did not miss out - the full programme of events was streamed live online, from lectures to workshops and even coffee breaks. This ensured that the Student Congress was accessible to all, so any student could engage with their Una Europa student community and make their voice heard.

In the eighth episode of the Una Europa podcast we hear from three Una Europa students that were able to attend the Student Congress in person in Madrid. Our student speakers offer perspectives from all corners of the alliance: Lovina Okonwko from Freie Universität Berlin, Louise Girard from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and Marco Reyes-Bernal from Uniwersytet Jagielloński w Krakowie.

Una Europa Podcast #7 on the transformative power of the European Degree

inga.odenthal@una-europa.eu (Kurt Willems, Mirko Varano, Sophia Karner) — Mon, 25 Oct 2021 06:00:00 +0000

In this seventh episode of the Una Europa podcast, two experts on the European Degree invite us to take part in the exciting process of shaping this innovative transnational programme format. Sharing their knowledge and front-row experience, our two invited speakers draw from the distinct viewpoints of their respective European University Alliances as they discuss their most pressing challenges and explain how the European Degree is different from other existing joint degrees.

Una Europa Podcast #6 on student innovation in the Una.Futura challenge

Thu, 9 Sep 2021 08:49:54 +0000

In this sixth episode of the Una Europa podcast we hear from two students who participated in Una.Futura, Pradeep Kumar and Matilda (Lily) Anderson, as well as associate professor Dr Mateusz Lewandowski who facilitated one of the student teams at the event. Our speakers reflect on their experiences of Una.Futura, what they learned and why Una Europa students should engage with these opportunities for transnational collaborative work offered by the alliance.

Una Europa Podcast #5 on our Cultural Heritage research community

Mon, 19 Jul 2021 09:46:10 +0000

In this fifth episode of the Una Europa Podcast, Dr Markus Edler, Chair of Una Europa's Doctoral Training Cluster, speaks to Professor Maria Gravari-Barbas from Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne about the amazing opportunities that arise from working in the Una Europa Cultural Heritage community. Gain first-hand insights into our new Joint Doctorate, Una-Her-Doc, which is open for applications now. Listen to two PhD candidates, Sabine Volk and Virginia de Diego, who participated in the Una Europa Cultural Heritage PhD Workshop over the last year and provide a testimonial of their experiences.

Una Europa Podcast #4 on the Future UniLab

Fri, 28 May 2021 06:05:33 +0000

In this podcast, Bartosz Brozek, Professor for Law and Philosophy at the Jagiellonian University and lead of Future UniLab, welcomes three visionaries for a joint re-cap on the work of Future UniLab to date.

Soledad Garcia Ferrari, Professor in Global Urbanism and Resilience at the University of Edinburgh, worked with a group of visionaries on the role of universities for sustainability.

Henna Pursiainen, student at the University of Helsinki and CEO of Dare to Learn, Northern Europe's largest learning festival, was member of a visionary group discussing how future universities should be integrated with their social environment.

James Lamb, Lecturer in Digital Education at the University of Edinburgh, joined a group of creative thinkers from the Una Europa universities and beyond which discussed the values future universities should embody.

Una Europa Podcast #3 on Research Collaboration

inga.odenthal@una-europa.eu (Jan Wouters, Maria Latorre, Herbert Grieshop) — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 05:03:32 +0000

Scientific advice to policy has hardly ever been more in the spotlight than over the last year. In their conversation with Herbert Grieshop from FU Berlin, Professor Maria Latorre from Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Professor Jan Wouters from KU Leuven reflect on their experiences in advising policy makers. Together with scientists from other Una Europa partners, they are working on "Dialogues between Policy and Academia", a project seed-funded by Una Europa. Learn more about their collaboration and what Una Europa means to them!

Una Europa Podcast #2 - Spotlight on the Student Board

Thu, 11 Feb 2021 20:05:12 +0000

Felix, Alexander and Weronika exchange about what excites them about Una Europa. They share some insights about how the Student Board works and how interested students can join. Tune in to hear about their 'behind the scenes' impressions and favourite Una Europa moments. And make sure to create your Una Europa moment, at the Student Congress on 24 February.

Introducing the Una Europa Podcast (episode #1)

Thu, 4 Feb 2021 12:21:33 +0000

In this first episode, Herbert Grieshop, Director of International Affairs at FU Berlin talks to Emily Palmer, Secretary-General of Una Europa, and Marta Molino, Project Officer of 1Europe. Join them for a 20-minute journey into the world of Una Europa, its core building blocks and its "little doses of craziness".

In the next episodes, you will, for instance, have the chance to ‘meet the voices’ of Una Europa students and researchers and get a glimpse of the visionary debates of Una Europa’s Future UniLab. Stay tuned.