Conference Program

Universities are facing a period of significant change that is affecting various social groups, including students, who have to decide on the strategies to adopt in order to enter a flexible and competitive world. The stages of life that involve the transition from study to work take complex and irregular trajectories, characterized by a high degree of reversibility and instability. Within this context, students are frequently called upon to decide how to conduct their lives and what adaptation strategies to consider to reconcile different worlds of life, including university and work. Despite having been little studied, the figure of the working student is becoming increasingly present within universities. In this regard, in 2025, an explanatory empirical study was conducted on the working conditions of students in the Department of Education Sciences at Roma Tre University. Using a mixed methodology, the study aimed to understand the multiple implications associated with the phenomenon and give a voice to student population. Among the various dimensions explored during the research, I will focus on the evaluation of the relationship between the academic world and the working world of these working students, seeking to highlight the possible motivations behind their choices and the adaptation strategies to deal with this complexity.

The analysis of the interviews highlights some important considerations.

The academic and professional worlds do not always communicate with each other, which is why individual adaptation strategies are fundamental. Many working students choose flexible jobs, often without contracts, which allow them to pick the best strategy to conciliate the two world of lifes, and only a few choose jobs consistent with their studies. The working world and the academic world do not seem to play a major role in this adaptation; they provide support, but everything seems to be left up to the individual. Working students must use their inner skills and discipline to build their own path, piece by piece, communicating now with one world, now with the other, as if they were two isolated spaces with no continuity between them.

Civil society organisations (CSOs) play a crucial role in promoting public engagement between higher education institutions (HEIs) and society, increasing the societal value of knowledge in rapidly changing labour markets (OECD, 2023). Universities are redefining their missions through transformative collaborations with CSOs and businesses, encouraging social innovation through co-developed curricula that include "on-the-job" experiences (Arocena et al., 2015, 2018; Rey-Garcia and Mato-Santiso, 2020).

These partnerships foster democratic practices by connecting academia with civil society, addressing inequalities, enhancing civic engagement, and strengthening social cohesion. However, they also create hybridisation tensions between university missions and CSO cultures, amid neoliberal pressures that reshape priorities and stakeholder interactions (Ravazzoli & Valero, 2020; Zani, 2017; Newfield, 2021; Hamilton et al., 2022).

This study investigates how HEI-CSO collaboration fosters public engagement and boosts the societal value of knowledge through democratic and transformative practices. Specifically, it examines the opportunities and key issues arising from the partnership between HEIs and CSOs, and how this synergy can help redefine the Third Mission and strengthen the university's social impact.

The research employs a qualitative, participatory approach, developed through two national workshops involving professors, researchers, university staff, as well as professionals and volunteers from various civil society organisations. The methodological design is grounded in the principles of action research (Argyris et al., 1985; Lewin, 1946) and applied social research, with the goal of promoting collaboration between institutions and participatory practices (Kemmis & McTaggart, 2000).

The workshops were designed as spaces for reflection and co-creation of change, focused on exploring shared visions, tensions, and strategies for social innovation. Subsequently, the collected data were analysed using the six-phase thematic analysis method proposed by Braun and Clarke (2008), which guided the entire interpretative process.

The study outlines several key trends in the contemporary debate: the emergence of new professional profiles and skills, collaboration between CSOs and HEIs in designing transversal and practice-oriented curricula, and the redefinition of the Third Mission as a space for experimentation and negotiation between social and academic interests. The analysis offers critical insights drawn from the experiences of those actively engaged in integrating civil society into academic practice, exploring current critical issues and strategies for systematising the dialogue between the knowledge and expertise of HEIs and CSOs, toward an education system more aware of its formative, cultural, scientific, and social mission.

In the French Higher education and research system, science communication professionals have always used changing terminology to describe their practices, promoting popularization or public understanding, and more recently, dialogue or participation. This variability in terminology is similarly found in most Western countries (Bergeron, 2016; Las Vergnas, 2016). The term ‘public engagement’, which has become ubiquitous in the rhetoric of science policy worldwide, is the most recent expression of this evolution. It now accompanies European policies that entrust the dissemination of knowledge to researchers or research institutions rather than the media (Hagendijk & Irwin, 2006; Weingart et al., 2021). Polysemic, it allows a wide range of actors to cooperate despite divergent interests while masking conflicts behind consensual objectives (Bensaude-Vincent 2014). Its adoption, an illustration of a phenomenon of mimetic isomorphism (Drori, Meyer, and Hwang 2006), provides no information on the concrete modalities of its implementation or on the effects it produces at different institutional levels.

Over the past 15 years, changes in the communication services of research institutions across Europe have shown largely convergent characteristics (Bauer & Entradas, 2023; Entradas et al., 2022). Existing work highlights the recent changes affecting all institutions, regardless of their size and age (Sörensen et al., 2026), and points to growing tensions between ‘corporate’ and ‘scientific’ communication.

National-level analysis provides a better understanding of how supranational dynamics are expressed in concrete terms: the circulation of organizational models, the effects of transnational injunctions linked to competitive funding, and the reappropriation of concepts from the academic field by public policies.

The French case remains largely overlooked in the international literature. This relative invisibility is partly due to the history of higher education studies in Europe (Kehm & Musselin, 2013) and its complexity. France is thus absent from most studies on university marketing (Hemsley-Brown & Oplatka, 2006) or communication officers (Casini & Neresini, 2012).

Our contribution is based on a mixed survey conducted in 2025 through interviews with 30 professionals and a questionnaire (57 responses) from the communication departments of universities and research centers. The analysis considers both official missions and concrete practices and highlights the lack of a political framework and clear indicators at the institutional level. It also emphasizes that the constant renewal of terminology in communication departments makes it difficult for researchers to assimilate it into their work. This instability weakens their relationship with communication professionals and limits their involvement in public engagement activities (Besley et al., 2021).

National public policies that encourage public participation have prompted institutional communication departments to reorganize internally to respond to calls for projects and obtain dedicated funding. These organizational changes may suggest a profound transformation. However, interviews with professionals show that these policies have not led to substantial changes in their practices or perceptions. Communication officers remain primarily focused on the local and immediate constraints that structure their daily activities. These observations highlight the tensions faced by services that receive little recognition and are subject to supranational standards and instruments that have to be constantly reinterpreted in local contexts.

TOGETHERNESS addresses the need to democratise knowledge production by strengthening connections between academic institutions and communities, in line with the debate on the transformative role of universities (Mezirow, 1991) and their emerging functions of co-creation for sustainability and social change (Trencher et al., 2014). It unfolds through 3 participatory research experiments conducted in Brussels, Sassari and Dublin, mobilising actors from different disciplines and sectors to co-produce knowledge aimed at addressing concrete territorial challenges. In this respect, it is situated within the broader field of Public Engagement with Research, while acknowledging the heterogeneity of practices encompassed by this label and the increasing ambiguity of the concepts that define it (Weingart et al., 2024). While recognising these definitional challenges, the project deliberately narrows its focus to forms of engagement explicitly oriented towards generating social change. It adopts a perspective of transformative engagement that emphasises the co-production of knowledge between universities and communities. It promotes Community-Based Learning (CBL) and Community-Based Research (CBR) as approaches capable of integrating research, education and societal impact, while also challenging traditional power asymmetries between academia and civil society (Banks et al., 2017). The project is structured around 5 WP focusing on coordination, community mobilisation, the development of digital tools and training pathways, the institutionalisation of participatory practices, and the strengthening of a transnational network. By engaging vulnerable populations, informal communities and interdisciplinary teams, the project aims to develop sustainable models for embedding CBL and CBR structurally within universities. In its initial phase, the project includes an exploratory research component designed to provide the conceptual, methodological and operational foundations for the design and implementation of the local experiments. This phase enables the analysis of existing participatory research and transformative engagement practices in relation to the institutional contexts and higher education and research policies within which they have developed. The aim is to understand how organisational strategies, incentive structures and regulatory frameworks shape the ability of scholars and communities to engage in effective, inclusive and long-lasting CBL and CBR practices. Attention is paid to 4 key dimensions that guide the project as a whole: interdisciplinarity as a resource for knowledge co-production; methodologies for engaging vulnerable populations, with a focus on power dynamics and the construction of equitable partnerships (Beebeejaun et al., 2014); the use of micro-credentials as capacity-building tools; and collaboration with non-formalised communities, balancing institutional requirements with operational flexibility. Micro-credentials represent a central instrument within the project to support joint training of academic staff and non-academic actors and strengthen stable partnerships between universities and communities. The Italian higher education system is examined in comparative perspective alongside the Belgian and Irish, situating the national analysis within a broader European framework. Through comparative analysis and the implementation of local experiments, the project will generate empirical evidence on the institutional, educational and relational conditions that enable transformative participatory research to develop sustainably, contributing to the European debate on the structural integration of CBL and CBR within universities.

This paper examines the phenomena of dropout and delayed graduation through the presentation and discussion of findings from a mixed‑methods research project conducted with students enrolled at Roma Tre University.

The Italian higher education system continues to exhibit comparatively high levels of dropout and significant delays in the attainment of tertiary qualifications (Cappa, Gavosto 2025). Among the primary contributing factors is the absence of a robust system for assessing students’ competencies and for supporting informed decisions regarding study pathways. In such conditions, when students lack motivation or clarity in their educational choices, the probability of academic stagnation or withdrawal increases markedly (Colombo, Salmieri 2022).

Extensive literature demonstrates that students’ integration into the academic community constitutes a critical factor in promoting persistence. Such integration manifests through regular participation in teaching activities, constructive interactions with faculty, engagement in extracurricular initiatives, and involvement in student networks and institutional programmes (Tinto 1994; Braxton 2003; Larson 2013). The present analysis therefore investigates whether—and in what respects—students perceive themselves as part of an academic community, in order to assess the extent to which this dimension supports their university trajectories.

The results emerging from both the questionnaire and interview phases indicate that students view the university as a pivotal context for personal development and intellectual growth, one that fosters “greater autonomy” and meaningful interaction with peers. Many respondents emphasized that their university experience has equipped them with valuable and transferable competencies relevant to both personal and professional spheres.

Crucially, students’ well‑being appears strongly associated with their level of integration into academic life. The development of relational networks with peers and faculty members is identified as essential not only for sustaining engagement with university studies but also for orienting vocational decision‑making, thereby enabling students to “refine their understanding of their specific professional vocation in coherence with their social and biographical trajectory” (Dewey 2020).

The study concludes that the dimension of “academic community” functions as a protective factor, fostering continuity in students’ progression and mitigating experiences of discouragement. This effect is further reinforced by orientation and tutoring initiatives and by the availability of services such as university cafeterias, study spaces, and digital environments.

Across contemporary higher education, time has become a central site of governance (Gibbs et al., 2014). Universities are increasingly organized through accelerated evaluation cycles, deadline-driven reporting, project-based funding, and metricized performance targets (Ylijoki, 2016). These arrangements do not only redistribute workloads; they also reshape the temporal grammars through which academic work is imagined as good or successful: what counts as timely productivity, what horizons are deemed realistic, and which rhythms of inquiry are rendered legitimate or inefficient. In this sense, temporal pressures operate as normative prescriptions that become naturalized in everyday routines, making contestation difficult while subtly reconfiguring research autonomy, the conditions of teaching quality, and the balance between intellectual work and administrative compliance.

To capture this temporal restructuring, the paper introduces the concept of temporal paradigm, defined as a patterned set of representations, values, and practices through which actors orient themselves in time and coordinate action under institutional constraints. Rather than treating temporalities as either abstract cultural frames or purely behavioral time-use patterns, the temporal paradigm conceptualizes how temporal norms are internalized and enacted: how time is cognitively represented, how it is practically managed, and how actors hierarchize and orient past, present, and future. Operationally, the construct is specified as multidimensional. The statutory dimension concerns cognitive representations of time and beliefs about its genesis. The conative dimension captures concrete time-management practices, including time monitoring, pace of life, planning ability, and the distribution of time across daily activities. The value dimension captures time horizon and time perspective, highlighting the relative salience and hierarchical ordering of past, present, and future in orienting action and planning.

Methodologically, the study draws on an original survey of professors and fixed-term researchers in Italian universities. Using the public national registry of academic staff, a randomized typological–factorial sample (N = 1,056) was designed to capture heterogeneity across roles and institutional contexts. The questionnaire includes item batteries for each sub-dimension of the temporal paradigm. The dimensional structure is assessed through scale construction and consistency checks, followed by cluster analysis to identify robust groupings of temporal paradigms.

Results identify eight temporal profiles. Four clusters related to the statutory and value orientation dimension emerged in the first analysis. In a second step, four other clusters were identified by considering only the conative dimension. Across profiles, time distribution is pivotal: many academics report the erosion of temporal boundaries and a strong absorption of working time by administrative and bureaucratic demands. More regulated profiles tend to allocate a higher share of working hours to research and a comparatively lower share to teaching, especially among fixed-term researchers whose career prospects are closely tied to research output. Overall, the findings suggest a transition toward accelerated, heterogeneous academic temporalities (Vostal, 2016), producing uneven adaptive strategies and heightened risks of short-termism and “time-eating” work cultures, particularly among younger academics (Berg & Seeber, 2016). As a long-term consequence, it could threaten the quality of future research and teaching (Connell, 2019).

Universities can act as key drivers of social innovation ([3]) when processes of knowledge valorization are combined with projects based on public engagement. This contribution highlights the experience of the University of Bologna in generating social innovation through co-creation initiatives involving diverse stakeholders such as researchers, professionals, institutions, and civil society organizations. Selected case studies will be presented, including new services for mental health ([1] and [2]) and the introduction of new professional roles in emergency departments. By fostering dialogue and shared design, universities can generate impactful solutions that respond to complex societal challenges.

The changes that have affected universities over the last three decades have sanctioned an epochal transformation in the relationship between academic knowledge and territorial development. Although within rather heterogeneous reformist approaches – and with particular reference to the national contexts of so-called developed countries – it is undeniable that the role and functions of knowledge have undergone a sort of Copernican revolution. Universities, no longer conceived as autonomous advanced centers of training and research (Pinto; 2019), have been compelled to periodically justify their utility and functionality within the framework of the priorities of the capitalist socio-economic system.

The transition from a Fordist accumulation system to a post-Fordist one has not proven to be a mere technical exercise. Instead, it has entailed a shift in the ways through which society and institutions – both public and private – participate in value production (The OECD Observer, 1980; Lebert e Vercellone 2006; Fraser, 2019; Braudel, 1977). Economies are framed as knowledge-based, and it is precisely through the knowledge society that they intend to compete. This conjuncture has been favoured by the development of network systems typical of cognitive capitalism, in which the university is conceptualized as an player directly involved in the economic and cultural development of the territory in which it is located (Perotti, 2010; Carayannis e Campbell 2009; Benneworth et al., 2009; Donolo, 1971)

The Third Mission (TM), understood as an organizational academic field, represents the outcome of the institutional modernization that has affected the University. It is common to distinguish between the economic and non-economic valorization of knowledge. Initially, academic activity with and for society were left to the discretion of individual researchers; today, they represent an expected counterpart for legitimation and recognition within and outside one's professional field. Drawing on data gathered through semi-structured interviews with academics from an Italian university, this article focuses on a specific area of the TM: public engagement. The aim is to understand the types of stakeholders with whom ties are forged (Bhattacharyya, 2004), the ways in which participation in development takes place, and the tools or actions employed (Benneworth, 2013); finally, it examines the limits and opportunities of this new mission (Hoye e Pries 2009; Baird, 2020; Tucker e Parker 2020).