Sina Westa hosts table at the 27th Anniversary of the Magna Charta Universitatum

UNIKE PhD fellow Sina Westa participates in the annual Anniversary of the Magna Charta Universitatum in Bologne.

Picture above: Sina Westa at the round table, which she was hosting during this year's Anniversary of the Magna Charta Universitatum conference in Bologne.

This year's Anniversary of the Magna Charta Universitatum took place from 17 and 18 September in Bologne, Italy. The conference marks that 388 rectors in 1988 signed the Magna Charta Universitatum with the aim of celebrating the values of university traditions and to encourage strong bonds among European universities.

Each year the Magna Charta Observatory organises an international conference to address current challenges in upholding the fundamental values and celebrates in a ceremony as more rectors sign the Magna Charta Universitatum. The theme of the conference this year was Values Beyond 2015: The Global Challenge for Universities and their Students.

Read more about the conference here and find the full programme.

Sina Westa hosted a table during the World Café Sessions at the conference with the topic "Consumerism or humanism: educational values in the University of Bologna and Beyond". The session was based on fieldwork conducted at the University of Bologna, supported by the university itself and the Magna Charta Observatory. The aim of the session was to discuss the changing discourse in higher education and its effects on university life with participating academics and students. Extracts and catch-phrases from 11 semi-structured in-depth interviews with academic staff from different disciplines concerning the issue of academic values and their work life at the University of Bologna were used to open up the discussion.

Sina Westa is a PhD fellow under UNIKE at the Faculty of Education at Ljubljana University and her topic is Academic Freedom in Teaching in Higher Education in Europe and the Asia Pacific Rim.

Read more about Sina Westa's research project here.