Jón Atli Benediktsson, Rector of the University of Iceland, took part in the Association of Internal Education Administrators Annual Conference, held in Washington D.C. in February. Around 950 international education leaders participated in the conference this year where the theme was Internationalization through Difference: Transcending Boundaries."
The conference focused on international collaboration between universities, and featured a special session on social responsibility – “Socially relevant research universities: from rhetoric to reality”. The conference was organised by Aurora, a community of European universities, where the University of Iceland is a founding institution. The rector of the University of Iceland spoke at the above mentioned session on the scope of research; the University's social responsibilities, and how the Aurora community is beneficial to university operations. David Richardson, Rector of East Anglia University in the UK, and Joy Johnson, Vice-President of Simon Fraser University in Canada, also spoke at the seminar and discussions were very lively. The chair was Kees Kouweannar from Vrije University in Amsterdam.
Jón Atli also took part as facilitator in the Transatlantic Leadership Forum organised jointly by AIEA and the European Association of International Education. The forum tackled subjects such as globalisation, universities’ role in society, University governance, collaboration, research, and publications. Jón Atli, rector of the University of Iceland closed the forum where he described his vision in this resect.
The Aurora network revolves around collaboration of nine distinguished European universities that share a commitment to advancing social good, top quality research, social responsibility, and helping communities better tackle urgent challenges. The network was formally launched in Amsterdam in the autumn of 2016. The nine founding institutions are: Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Netherlands), Université Grenoble-Alpes (France), University of Aberdeen (Scotland), University of Antwerp (Belgium), University of Bergen (Norway), University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany), University of East Anglia (England), University of Gothenburg (Sweden), and the University of Iceland.