The application for the University of Groningen summer schools has opened! These interdisciplinary, research driven programmes are an opportunity to learn more about your own field or to broaden your knowledge, work on important questions and gain inspiration for your studies and/or research! 

Femke De Backere, associate professor at Ghent University and senior scientist at imec, blends software engineering with impactful healthcare research. Through ENLIGHT, she co-teaches the interdisciplinary summer school Innovation Game: Applying Serious Game Design in Health Care at Uppsala University. In this interview, she shares how ENLIGHT has helped her build international collaborations and push the boundaries of education and research in personalized, serious games. Read the full interview here.

Join University of Galway, University of Groningen/UMCG and Uppsala University on April 8^th  for a dynamic pan-European forum exploring Public and Patient Involvement (PPI) in research. This event brings together distinguished speakers from Sweden, the Netherlands, and Ireland who will share insights from case studies, highlighting both the commonalities and differences in PPI practices across diverse European contexts. There will be opportunities to hear perspectives from other ENLIGHT colleagues across Europe.  

This event will take place in University of Galway, Ireland from 10am-4pm (GMT) and will also be available online to international colleagues, ensuring ample opportunity for engagement and participation for virtual attendees. This event is kindly funded by ENLIGHT.

Additional details and registration available here.

Throughout the session, speakers with audience participation will discuss innovative strategies, collaborative approaches, and the nuanced challenges of integrating public and patient voices into research. Attendees will gain valuable perspectives on how these varied experiences contribute to shaping inclusive research across Europe. 

Whether you are a researcher, member of the public, PPI contributor, student, policymaker, or stakeholder passionate about PPI, this event offers a unique opportunity to learn from real-world case studies, engage in cross-border dialogue, and be inspired by the evolving landscape of public and patient involvement in research. 

To stimulate and support the bottom-up cooperation between the ENLIGHT university communities, ENLIGHT launched a first set of calls for joint initiatives in April 2024 . A second set of calls is launched in April 2025. 

Each call targets joint proposals for specific types of actions involving at least three ENLIGHT instutions. 

1. Call for ENLIGHT Incubator Grants: to support joint programmes, joint future-proof education projects and stepping-stones for international learning across the six ENLIGHT focus areas. A 3rd call will be launched in Spring 2026.
2. Call for ENLIGHT Thematic Networks: to support interdisciplinary academic networks for developing joint challenge-based activities linking education, research and outreach across the six ENLIGHT focus areas. The current call is the last one, no further calls will be launched before November 2027.
3. (ongoing) ENLIGHT+ call: to foster new emerging joint (small-scale, inclusive and/or sustainable) initiatives across disciplines. This is a call with several deadlines per year, to be continued until November 2027.

Find out more HERE.