When Universities Decide: From Collective Inquiry to Public Consequence
18th September 9:30 AM – 12:00 PM BST
Universities are under growing pressure to respond to rapid technological change, social challenges, financial constraints, and shifting public expectations. Yet decisions about the future of higher education are rarely straightforward. How should universities balance competing priorities? What values should guide their choices? And who is affected when difficult decisions are made?
Organised by the Una Europa Future University Lab, this participatory event invites attendees to explore the tensions, trade-offs, and responsibilities involved in shaping the university of the future. Through a collaborative workshop, participants will examine different perspectives on the purpose of the university and consider how institutions navigate competing demands in practice.
Rather than seeking simple answers or easy consensus, the session will encourage critical reflection on the choices universities face and the consequences those choices carry. Together, participants will explore what it means not only to imagine the future university, but to make decisions that help bring it into being.
Speaker Biographies
Federica G. Pedriali is Personal Chair in Literary Metatheory and Modern Italian Studies at the University of Edinburgh and a Research Affiliate at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. Her work spans continental philosophy, biopolitics, narratology, and political ontology, with a sustained focus on how collectives organise change, conflict, and the conditions of world-making. She has authored or edited twenty-four volumes and is the editor of The Diaphragm of Politics: Roberto Esposito and Italian Thought beyond the Machine (Edinburgh University Press, in press). Current projects include The Future of Change (forthcoming), When Universities Decide (in preparation), and The Roberto Esposito Dictionary (in preparation). A former Visiting Professor at Harvard and the University of Pavia, she leads Europe and the World, a flagship Una Europa research strand spanning eleven European universities. In 2024, she was awarded the Knighthood of the Order of the Star of Italy in recognition of her distinguished career.
Mateusz Hohol is Associate Professor at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, where he serves as Director of the Copernicus Center for Interdisciplinary Studies and leads the Mathematical Cognition and Learning Lab. Holding a habilitation in psychology and a PhD in philosophy, his research focuses on cognitive science, mathematical cognition, and the study of how minds acquire and process numerical and geometric concepts. He teaches in the Cognitive Science Programme and at the Doctoral School in the Social Sciences at the Jagiellonian University.
