Access UCC Team Visits Malmö University on Erasmus+ Staff Visit

18 Jun 2024

Seven University College Cork colleagues from the Access UCC team visited Malmö University, Sweden, on May 20-23 2024, participating in a workshop hosted by counterpart colleagues involved in Widened Recruitment and Widened Participation areas of the university.

Deirdre Madden, Deirdre Falvey, Maeve Minihane, Katie Nolan, Gillian Butler, Emma Sliney and James Bilson visited Malmö University, a UNIC partner university, on Erasmus+ staff mobility. Colleagues from Erasmus University Rotterdam and Södertörns University (Stockholm) also participated in the workshop and shared in knowledge exchange. 

Malmö University hosts further arranged specific meetings for members of the UCC group, based on the specific roles and expressed interest of each colleague. Commenting afterwards, James Bilson (Administrative Officer, Access UCC), reflected on the value of the visit. James noted that the various colleagues from other universities expressed a lot of similar challenges to those experienced in UCC, in areas such as in relation to funding, engagement and communication; it was valuable for the UCC team to hear different perspectives on common themes.

James noted that there was excellent knowledge sharing on such diverse matters as community-based project implementation, accessibility matters, universal design principles, onboarding events, service delivery principles, co-creation,student representation, resources, and guidelines. The value of the visit is likely to have a longer-term impact for the team, as they collectively bring in the lessons learned to their work and hope to engage in future collaboration.