The EUTOPIA Alliance is an innovative project to create a European knowledge community, which generates spaces for meeting and interrelating among the communities of a dozen universities in different countries, including UPF. The Alliance also has a transformative spirit, as it aims to foster changes and improvements within university environments based on the synergies established between its members. All groups of the university community can participate in the Alliance: students, teaching and research staff and also the Technical, Management and Administration and Service Staff (PTGAS). 

This initiative provides PTGAS with the opportunity to participate actively in various working groups (see the list of working groups at the end), collaborating in university improvement and innovation projects, whereby the network of professional contacts can also be developed and expanded. In this report, we will find out about the experiences of several members of the UPF PTGAS who have already been involved in the Alliance since its creation in 2018.

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Lluïsa Rojas, head of the UPF Equality and Diversity Unit: “The fact that we work in the same university environment allows us to see that all universities have similar problems and we can take home good examples from the mistakes and successes of others”

One of them is Lluïsa Rojas, head of the UPF Equality and Diversity Unit. Lluïsa has followed online EUTOPIA meetings related to gender and diversity issues since 2021 and, on 10 November, she participated in the organization of Eutopia Day at UPF. In 2025, the conference was devoted to diversity in the university environment and the Equality and Diversity Unit was involved in the design of the workshops held there.

More recently, at the beginning of 2026, she participated in a EUTOPIA conference on ethical criteria and power relations in university environments, entitled “Navigating power and ethics: preventing and responding to transgressions in a university alliance”, which was hosted by Ca’Foscari University of Venice on 22 and 23 January.

After participating, Rojas has the following words of appraisal of the meeting: “It was an interesting joint reflection on the abuse of power and harassment in a university setting and how they can be addressed. The legal frameworks of the different member universities differ greatly and this does not allow us to reach a single formula for all, but, in any case, we concluded that there is a very high reputational risk for our institutions if we do not act against transgressions in coexistence and that a good balance must be found between punishing offenders and reparations for those affected”.

For Rojas, spaces like these for sharing experiences are also a good source of learning. “The fact that we work in the same university environment allows us to see that all universities have similar problems and we can take home good examples from the mistakes and successes of others”, she explains.

During the Venice conference, Rojas was especially interested to hear about good practices from other universities on the reparation of victims of discrimination. Indeed, UPF is working on updating its protocol on the subject, which will incorporate the concept of reparation for the first time. To tackle this and other challenges of the University, “taking from good practices can be a good work tool that helps to advance in equality, diversity and inclusion”, she concludes.

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Xavier Martínez Granell, head of the UGA for Economics and Business at UPF: “mobility between universities of the Alliance complements other mobility opportunities for PTGAS, with the advantage of not having to ‘cold call’ because the contacts are already made”

Another UPF professional involved in the EUTOPIA Alliance, also a member of the University’s PTGAS, is Xavier Martínez Granell. At UPF, he is in charge of the Management and Administration Unit (UGA) for Economics and Business; and, in EUTOPIA, he is sits on a board that provides the perspective of the workers of the member universities to the Alliance’s strategy. This is the Faculty and Staff Council, which advises the Alliance on various issues, especially on the implementation of education, research and innovation actions and the development of collaborative services.

The Council was set up three years ago and its members are currently appointed by the rectors of each member university. Each institution appoints three members, including both academic staff and representatives of administrative services. Xavier Martínez Granell was appointed as a member of this body in May 2023, which also includes UPF professors Josep Capdeferro (Faculty of Law) and Ana Janic (Faculty of Medicine and Life Sciences).

The Council met for the first time during EUTOPIA Week in Lisbon (June 2023) and, since then, its members have held at least two meetings a year. EUTOPIA Weeks are biannual meeting spaces where the representatives of the member universities take stock of the actions undertaken and discuss future lines of action. Indeed, in 2026, one of the two scheduled EUTOPIA Weeks will take place at UPF, in Barcelona, from 23 to 27 November. It will be at this meeting that the final appraisal of the strategic programme of the EUTOPIA-More Alliance (2023-2026), which has been coordinated by UPF, will be made and the new project of the Alliance for the next two years (2027-2028), for which EU funding will be sought, will be dealt with.

From his experience in EUTOPIA, Xavier says: “Mobility between universities of the Alliance complements other mobility opportunities for PTGAS, with the advantage of not having to ‘cold call’ because the contacts are already made. Participating in the EUTOPIA representative bodies and working groups is also a form of mobility and a way to escape the everyday environment. It serves to learn new things, but sometimes it also serves to confirm that the difficulties you commonly experience are not unique to you, or here, and that you are doing things as best you can”.

For Xavier, these spaces for exchange also useful to reinforce dialogue skills: “We have to learn that it is ideas that are discussed, not people. If the idea you propose is not approved, it is not a failure and you should not feel personally questioned: we move forward and discuss another proposal”, he assures.

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Eva Martín, director of the UPF Research Service: “I recommend participating in EUTOPIA because it is a good investment in your own professional assets: you learn, interrelate and grow”

Eva Martín, director of the UPF Research Service, currently heavily involved in the development of the Eutopia Health initiative (2024-2029) has also learned a great deal from the EUTOPIA Alliance. Its goal is to promote collaboration in health research, from an interdisciplinary perspective, mainly with researchers from EUTOPIA universities located in growing countries (University of Ljubljana, in Slovenia; NOVA University Lisbon, in Portugal; and Babeș-Bolyai University, in Romania).

Within the framework of the initiative, UPF leads a working group to promote researcher mobility and manage a call for grants to fund collaborative projects led by universities in growing countries, with the participation of the rest of the Alliance’s centres. EUTOPIA Health has also organized Hackathons to seek joint responses to shared challenges in health, and has provided training for university researchers in this field, among other activities.

Prior to EUTOPIA health, Martín had already been involved in another research initiative, funded by the European Horizon 2020 programme. It was EUTOPIA TRAIN (2021-2023), which aimed to promote shared collaboration tools in research and transfer among the six founding universities of the alliance, including UPF.  “We wanted to define a framework to create a virtual office of shared projects for major Horizon Europe calls that the European Commission itself identified as a good practice”, Martín recalls. The project also sought to promote open science, to facilitate free access to data and research results, which also involved the UPF Library/CRAI.

As a result of these and other experiences in the Alliance -she has also participated in several Eutopia Weeks and other research-related activities-, Eva has learned a lot. For example, she has identified good practices at other universities, which could inspire new initiatives at UPF, for example in the field of participation, research data management or in citizen science issues. Eva adds that participating in EUTOPIA has given her new professional perspectives: “it has allowed me look at something other than the day to day at UPF to understand how science is managed in very diverse ecosystems. I have learned that despite differences in legislation, challenges and difficulties are universal. In addition, it has served as a live laboratory of good practices, which has allowed me to compare how participation in ERC grants is managed by different universities and this has been an asset to improve our internal processes and also enforce them”.

In a more personal light, Martín highlights the intercultural nature of the Alliance: “managing projects in which ten different work cultures converge teaches you to listen more and find creative consensuses”. Above all it is “a network of European colleagues who have become allies, a community of professionals who help each other and who can be resorted to when necessary”. “Personally, it has been enriching and I have fond memories of it”, adds Eva, who does not hesitate to recommend the experience to her colleagues at UPF: “Although it is often seen as extra work, I recommend participating in EUTOPIA because it is a good investment in your own professional assets: you learn, interrelate and grow”.

Which EUTOPIA working groups can PTGAS get involved in?

If you are a member of the PTGAS and you would like to get involved in EUTOPIA, you can find out which Alliance working groups you could participate in in the table below. 

Further information and contact of the EUTOPIA Office at UPF

Here you can find more detailed information about all the working groups. If there is an area that interests you, you can contact the UPF EUTOPIA Office at [email protected] where they will help you get involved in the project in the area that interests you most.