Discussing and developing at the European level

Your work package is about diversity and inclusion – what exactly does this entail?

Michael Vogt: We are advancing the understanding of inclusion and diversity at the European level. How do NEOLAiA partner universities practice diversity and inclusion in their country, in their region, and at their institution? How, and what specific ways, does this manifest in the day-to-day at their respective universities?

Amelie Labusch: We are focusing on recognizing the positive examples and strengths of how each partner university deals with inclusion and diversity, instead of looking for deficits.

Michaela Vogt: And we ask ourselves which existing practices are so outstanding that we want to share them across Europe – within the NEOLAiA alliance and beyond? We want to enable students, technical and administrative staff, along with researchers and instructors to get involved in these efforts within our European University.

Take us into the mechanics of your work package. How does this kind of collaboration work?

Michaela Vogt: In general, all work packages are structured to facilitate collaboration within NEOLAiA. As a university alliance, we are indeed addressing a wide range of topics – from joint research and teaching to Europe-wide mobility for students, researchers and administrative staff, and to diversity and inclusion in our work package. The alliance articulated overarching goals in the funding application to the European Commission and attached these to milestones and tasks. And now all the work packages are moving towards accomplishing the many small and large subgoals.

Amelie Labusch: In our work package, we have an online meeting once a month with our European colleagues and define the next tasks to be tackled. As is the case with other NEOLAiA work packages, we are in close and regular contact with representatives from partner institutions, from researchers to administration staff, from law to education. In our work package, all of our D&I delegates have expertise in diversity and inclusion. During intensive phases of work, we schedule more frequent meetings and also meet in person. Last November, for instance, as part of the work package, we spent three days together in Bielefeld working on our next milestone – the NEOcharter for Diversity and Inclusion.

For the NEOcharter, we are taking a three-step approach: our D&I delegates have compiled the central and most important points of their respective university guidelines on diversity and inclusion. At the same time, we, as the Bielefeld team responsible for this work package, travelled to all NEOLAiA locations in Europe to gather our own first-hand impressions of each university. By the way: A white paper on NEOcharter has already been published in English.

Michaela Vogt: It was important for us to understand the following: how do students and staff at the respective partner universities feel about their institutional D&I guidelines? Where do they see inclusion and diversity in action at their university? We conducted a survey at all NEOLAiA partner institutions and also did personal interviews to add further nuance to these perspectives. All preliminary findings were summarised and discussed in great detail at the meeting in Bielefeld in November. This high degree of engagement is the basis of our NEOcharter.

Working together with partners from different cultures and institutions is surely a challenge…

Michaela Vogt: From the very beginning, our group has been working together very transparently and collegially – and also critically in the positive sense. We are constantly learning from and engaging with each other. To give an example, the in-person meeting in Bielefeld to develop the NEOcharter resulted in a complete overhaul of the draft we started with at the beginning of the meeting. And it ultimately became a better text! The support of local Bielefeld experts here was indispensable, including, for instance, the Central Accessibility Services, the Equal Opportunities Office, and Family Services.

What is up next in terms of milestones for the NEOcharter?

Michaela Vogt: The next steps are to finalise the version that was modified during our in-person meeting and then have it go through the committees at all partner universities as well as in Bielefeld. By signing the NEOcharter in May, all members of the alliance committed to aligning their approach to inclusion and diversity in accordance with the framework charter. Part of this also includes conceptualising action plans. These are specific measures to promote diversity and inclusion at each partner university. The NEOcharter will thus serve as the initial spark to further strengthen the issue of D&I our European NEOLAiA partner universities – and also here at our own university.

What other tasks and milestones does your work package include?

Amelie Labusch: We are also working on a database of examples of best practices on diversity and inclusion at NEOLAiA partner universities. In addition to this, we are planning our first NEO live events, where partner universities from the alliance can come together to discuss the topic in digital and in-person settings. Starting in 2026, training modules are planned to be made available to all status groups at NEOLAiA partner universities to help foster promote diversity and inclusion at all levels.

And for one last question: what actually characterises a successful collaboration at the European level?

Amelie Labusch: In our work, we have experienced warm hospitality and generous support from all our partners, for which we are very grateful. I’ve been impressed by how constructively all those involved have been to addressing these multifaceted tasks together. And of course, not everything always runs perfectly in such a large project, but together we always find solutions.

Michaela Vogt: Trust is at the heart of the cooperation among the nine NEOLAiA partners. We have many long-standing relationships of trust here, which we are continually deepening. In the long term, however, it is especially important to us that these relationships get translated, so to speak, into structures. We want to expand NEOLAiA and embed it structurally so that the alliance can continue to grow and develop in a stable way.