Tampere University of Applied Sciences (TAMK) is part of the European Universities Alliance UNINOVIS. In September 2025, we—two senior lecturers, Milla Salama and Katja Hautsalo—visited Kauno Kolegija in Lithuania as part of the Erasmus+ Staff Mobility for Teaching program.
At the beginning of November, UNINOVIS European Universities Alliance welcomed its newest member, The Hague University of Applied Sciences (THUAS), bringing the number of full member-HEIs to eight. Upon joining, THUAS assumed the responsibility for planning and coordinating communications and marketing actions of the alliance, as well as defining the brand message of Uninovis. It was to this end that a meeting of all Uninovis communication leads was organized in The Hague on 10-11 November. The 2-day visit also provided an ample opportunity for the European colleagues to get to know the THUAS main campus, since most of us were in The Hague for the first time.
The Master's Degree Program in Social Services at Tampere University of Applied Sciences has started a new cooperation with our Uninovis partner, the Faculty of Applied Social Sciences at THWS. Last autumn we offered an opportunity for exchange and reflection in the courses ‘Theories of Social Work and Approaches to Social Work’ in Finland and ‘Social Work as Science’ in Germany. Groups on both courses were inspired to this by using Malcolm Payne's book ‘How to use Social Work Theory in Practice’ (2020). This idea has now been developed into an international theory seminar, which will take place next autumn.
I got to do my long-awaited staff exchange at the University of Tirana, Albania, in early May. The reason for choosing Tirana as my Erasmus+ destination was twofold. Firstly, after having done my teacher’s education practice in a local language school in November 2024, I wanted to gain deeper understanding of how foreign languages are taught at the university level and what awaits the graduates upon completing their studies and entering the Albanian job market. Secondly, as the University of Tirana (UT) is one of our Uninovis partners, I took the opportunity to explore the potential for international mobility co-operation and academic exchange between our two institutions.
University Sorbonne Paris Nord (USPN) held an international week themed “European Alliances, Challenges in Interculturality” from May 19-23, 2025, supported by the European Commission Blended Intensive Programme (BIP).
TAMK’s international week, Eye on TAMK, has already become a tradition. Every other year in March hundreds of colleagues from across the world flock into Tampere to hear about the latest trends in teaching and learning. This year an entirely new track was introduced to the program, namely that of Uninovis. Since January 2025 TAMK has been part of the European Universities Alliance Uninovis, comprising seven higher education institutions. Eye on TAMK provided a great backdrop for the Uninovis partners to spread the word about the alliance and meet each other to discuss future actions.
