EUniWell - La Universidad Europea del Bienestar

With the start of 2023, the European University for Well-Being has invited a new partner to join the Alliance: The University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) is one of the oldest universities in the world in continuous operation. Founded in 1495, its two campuses are both located in cities that have been designated World Heritage Sites by UNESCO: Santiago de Compostela and Lugo. Fully aligned with European values and the Sustainable Development Goals, the university already maintains close collaborations with several EUniWell members.

 “The University of Santiago de Compostela underscores sustainability and excellence as essential major defining features of EUniWell. We are very much looking forward to getting to know and working with our new partner and are excited to see what new perspectives USC will bring to our Alliance,” says EUniWell Chief Development Officer Professor Beatrix Busse. 

With its unique cultural heritage and distinction as the best university in Spain for the discipline of Environmental Sciences in 2022, as well as its leading role in health sciences and expertise in teacher education, which includes integrated research capacities, USC is expected to make fruitful contributions to all four of EUniWell’s Research Arenas. “We want to make a tangible contribution to the development of EUniWell as a truly integrated and fully-fledged European University that has a significant societal impact within the EU and also reaches out to peripheral regions with small towns, dispersed populations and predominantly rural areas to support these regions in developing their potential,” says Professor Antonio López Díaz, Chancellor of the University of Santiago de Compostela.

The University of Santiago de Compostela 

The University of Santiago de Compostela is a comprehensive, research-intensive university with a wide academic offer that combines tradition with innovation in all areas of knowledge in response to the challenges of modern society. This endows USC with a great potential to establish synergies between different thematic areas so as to address EUniWell’s notion of well-being from a broad perspective. With a clear international vocation, USC can increase the presence of EUniWell in Latin America and open a channel to Lusophone countries thanks to the linguistic proximity between Galician and Portuguese. Moreover, USC can offer its experience in EU-funded programmes and the development of cross-border joint degrees such as those deriving from the project Universidade sem Fronteiras, involving the public universities of Galicia and Northern Portugal. 

Background: the European University for Well-Being

EUniWell is one of currently 44 European University Alliances, funded by the EU Commission with the aim of achieving a European Education Area in which learning, studying and researching across national borders is a matter of course. EUniWell was launched in 2020 in the second pilot phase of the European Universities Initiative. The Alliance pursues a holistic, knowledge-based and action-oriented approach to well-being, in response to the call of the Council of the European Union to the Member States to promote the ‘Economy of Wellbeing’, a virtuous cycle between society, economy and the environment, leading to greater well-being across those dimensions. The core mission of EUniWell is to understand, improve, measure, and rebalance the well-being of individuals, our own community, and society as a whole based on our joint values – democratic, inclusive, diverse, research and challenge-based, inter- and transdisciplinary, entrepreneurial, and co-creational.

As new member of the European University for Well-Being, the University of Santiago de Compostela joins the Universities of Birmingham, Cologne, Florence, Konstanz and Murcia, Linnaeus University, Nantes Université, Semmelweis University, and Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.