On May 11-12, the Aurora Spring Biannual Conference was held in Innsbruck, Austria, with a record number of participants. More than 180 students and staff from Aurora Universities and other Aurora partners came together, including 18 student and staff representatives of the University of Iceland. The aim of the conference was to celebrate the success that has been achieved in the Aurora collaboration as well as to discuss the many challenges that universities face in such an ambitious international collaboration. Aurora universities will soon begin writing a new application for continued EU funding, so the conference was a welcome opportunity for the Aurora community to exchange experiences and align priorities before the formal preparations begin.
Tilmann Märk, Rector of the University of Innsbruck and Jón Atli Benediktsson, Rector of the University of Iceland and President of Aurora, spoke at the opening of the conference. The war in Ukraine and its impact on students and staff of the National V.N. Karazin University in Kharkiv, an associate Aurora partner, was a major focus in both addresses. The university's rector, Tetyana Kaganovska, attended the conference in person despite the dangerous circumstances and gave a presentation in which she explained the consequences of the war on the university and how its staff have tried to continue teaching under incredibly difficult circumstances. Tetyana also accepted emergency financial support from the University of Iceland and other Aurora universities amounting to 51,000 euros to meet the university's most urgent needs, such as the purchase of new computers and equipment for teachers to conduct online teaching. You can read here a formal statement from Tetyana Kaganovska about her participation in the Aurora Spring Biannual Conference.
Sabine Allain Sainte-Rose, Programme Director of the EU funded programme, presented the progress made in Aurora over the past 18 months. Enormous efforts have been made in all Aurora universities which has resulted in a new Aurora website and "Virtual Campus" where students and staff can find various opportunities for studying, training and collaboration all of which have an emphasis on social entrepreneurship and sustainability. Aurora has already offered more than 140 such opportunities to its community with about 4000 participants in total. At the same time, the Aurora Student Council has been working on a new handbook to ensure the active participation of students and the council's institutional memory, and Alma Ágústsdóttir, president of the Aurora Student Council and international representative of SHÍ, presented the first copy to Jón Atli Benediktsson.
