Benedikte Custers and Miguel Lim represent UNIKE at Academia Europaea Conference in Hannover

UNIKE PhD fellows Miguel Lim and Benedikte Custers participated in the Academia Europaea Conference at the University of Kassel in Hannover, Germany.

Benedikte Custers and Miguel Lim together with the Volkswagen Foundation Conference Grant Awardees at the Academia Europaea Conference 2016 in Hannover.

Benedikte Custers and Miguel Lim, both UNIKE PhD fellows, participated in the Academia Europaea Conference 2016, which took place in Hannover at the University of Kassel, 29-30 September 2016.

The conference titled University Governance: Impeding or Facilitating Creativity? focused on the relationship between governance and creativity in higher education and research as one of the biggest challenges for the present and future academic and scientific development. Researchers dealing with issues of governance and creativity in universities presented their findings at the conference as well as practitioners representing the field of higher education leadership contributed from their experiences.

Read more about the Academia Europaea Conference 2016.

Miguel Lim explains about his impression of the conference: “The conference focused on the theme of creativity and how to govern universities in order to promote it. There were several interesting discussions around this theme. Some of them revolved around the growing importance of the ‘impact agenda’ and how researchers need to be aware of and prove the impact of their research. This can be, in some cases, a hindrance to creativity. Another of the discussions that struck me was the need to involve students in the process of creativity. Students have a role to play in the creative life of the university."

Miguel Lim furthermore explains about his gains from participating in the conference: "Some of most insightful realisations came from listening to Professor Stefan Hell, a physicist and winner of the Nobel Prize in 2014. He argued that academics who wanted to do research on groundbreaking ideas faced great obstacles and that ‘experts’ and academic systems did not usually support research that broke the existing boundaries of knowledge. He showed through his personal experience how it took a lot of personal determination to secure support to carry out research to break through widely held conventions. He recommended greater support for younger academics who were willing to take risks in their work.

See the conference programme here.