Mobility is more than travel — it’s about creating inclusive pathways for learning, teaching, research, and professional growth across Europe. Within the NEOLAiA Alliance, Work Package 4 (Enhanced Mobility) takes on the ambitious task of transforming traditional academic exchange into a diverse, flexible, and accessible mobility ecosystem.
By fostering blended, virtual, and physical mobility, WP4 empowers students, researchers, teachers, and university staff to gain international experience without barriers — whether they’re moving across countries or connecting digitally. The work package prioritizes inclusion, intercultural awareness, and lifelong learning, ensuring that every participant benefits, regardless of background or circumstances.
From internships in regional companies to virtual classrooms across nine universities, from joint research visits to staff training networks, WP4 is reimagining how mobility works — and who it works for.
“We’re not just offering new courses and formats — we’re integrating them into study programmes. That’s the real challenge, and we’ve decided to go for it.”
In the following interview, we spoke with the WP4 team to uncover how they’re making mobility meaningful, what challenges they’re overcoming, and what the future holds for transnational academic collaboration in NEOLAiA.
Read on to discover how mobility is helping shape a more connected, inclusive, and innovative European university.
Can you introduce Work Package 4 and its main responsibilities within the NEOLAiA Alliance?
All universities want to increase the number of students on placements and improve the quality and impact of these on students’ courses. So, Work Package 4 (WP4) is called Enhanced Mobility. The idea is to come up with a new kind of mobility scheme that’s innovative and inclusive, so it covers all kinds of exchanges, whether they’re physical, virtual or a mix of both. We just want to open doors for people to get around NEOLAiA universities. We’re not just offering new courses and formats to students, though. We’re integrating them into study programmes, which is the main challenge we’re facing in the project and in our consortium. It’s not an easy target, but we’ve decided to go for it. Its main responsibilities include expanding beyond traditional mobility by introducing blended and virtual schemes, as well as making sure mobility is integrated into academic programmes and offering custom-made opportunities for students, researchers, teachers and administrative staff across all partner institutions.
Why is mobility a crucial aspect of the NEOLAiA Alliance?
Mobility is at the core of NEOLAiA’s mission to create a connected and inclusive European academic space. It’s one of the ways we help students and staff to improve their intercultural skills, knowledge and competencies. In the consortium, we’re inspired by our partners, we have an ongoing dialogue with the university, we keep up to date with developments and changes in the European educational area by meeting with our partners and, to use a poetical expression, we see things through their eyes. What’s more, these mobilities have a big impact – they often lead to more cooperation among academics and forge strong bonds among students. They’ll last way longer than just while you’re on the move. It strengthens regional ties and directly supports the alliance’s goal to promote European values through academic collaboration and international exposure.
How does WP4 contribute to strengthening international collaboration?
Mobility is a natural and essential part of international cooperation. At the end of the day, collaboration between universities is ultimately about people working together. Within WP4, we aim to connect as many departments and individuals as possible who share similar or related areas of focus, to strengthen meaningful partnerships. We put a lot of effort into creating mobility plans that work for all nine universities, and it’s not always easy. I’m sure you can imagine how tricky it is to get nine different environments in nine countries and universities with different internal processes to work together. But we can see that NEOLAiA has a lot of potential to make harmonisation easier, so we’re looking for common pathways in cooperation and building, I would say, a joint spirit for collaboration. And finally, we’ve got the NEOLAiA Mobility Support Team to set up. This coordination between different organisations makes it easy for people to move between them and encourages long-term cooperation in the alliance’s educational, research and other communities.
What types of mobility programmes does WP4 offer for students and staff?
WP4 offers a wide variety of mobility opportunities so that everyone interested can find something that suits them. Most of the programmes are based on Erasmus+.
For students, there are classic long-term exchanges for studying or doing internships in regional companies and institutions. These are great for gaining hands-on experience and improving job prospects. Such stays usually last several months.
Blended Intensive Programmes are also very popular — they mix short physical stays (usually about a week) with online learning and teamwork. In NEOLAiA, this includes things like Focus Academy or Summer School. We’re also working on a range of fully virtual courses, so students can take advantage of partner university programmes without leaving home.
For staff, academic colleagues can go teach at one of the NEOLAiA partner universities. Both teaching and non-teaching staff can join training programmes that focus on sharing ideas, good practices and gaining new perspectives. These can aim on building networks among similar professional roles — for example, librarians, HR specialists, or career advisors.
Researchers can take part in joint research visits or join the Mentorship Programme, which connects early-stage researchers with more experienced mentors.
How does mobility support both academic and personal growth?
As I mentioned earlier Mobility fosters academic enrichment through the exposure to new study and work environments for students and for staff. Every change in your role means you must learn new things, and you must work, behave and even think differently. Well, sort of. This is useful for everyone at the university, whether they’re students, academics or non-academic staff. It also supports researchers working together on joint research topics. It’s all about transforming distance – whether it’s geographical, cultural or social – into closeness.
What challenges exist in ensuring equal access to mobility opportunities?
Basically, we’re trying to get rid of as many obstacles as we can. Our students usually mention things like money issues, courses that don’t fit properly, administration that’s too complicated, and personal limits like family commitments or health problems. We deal with it by creating inclusive formats, like virtual mobility, designing mobility windows that fit with degree programmes, and making sure credits are recognised. This is a long-distance run, but for us it’s the most important part of the project.
Is it difficult to motivate students and staff to get international experience by participating in the mobility programmes? How does WP4 help students and staff make the most of their mobility experiences?
I’d say both yes and no — it really depends on the university and the individual. Some students and staff are naturally open to mobility and are happy to take part, even more than once. But our goal is to offer this experience to as many people as possible, including those who hesitate or feel uncertain about going abroad. That’s why we focus our motivation and support activities especially on this group.
In WP4, we’re working with several tools to support this effort. One of them is an Online Mobility Guide we’re currently preparing. It will explain the different types of mobility, help users choose the right option, and highlight the benefits of participating in NEOLAiA exchanges.
We also see value in helping participants consciously build their cross-cultural competences. Through training and self-assessment, they can actually track how much they’ve developed before and after their mobility.
Another great example is the International Student Fair, first piloted at the University of Jaén. Representatives from NEOLAiA universities presented opportunities, answered students’ practical questions — like accommodation or language requirements — and made mobility feel more real and accessible.
And finally, we have the Mobility Support Team. They help at every stage of the process. One of the biggest challenges is internal communication within each university — making sure that every faculty and department has clear and accessible information to pass on to students and staff.
How does mobility contribute to internationalisation within NEOLAiA?
In a nutshell? It’s a big deal… 😊 Mobility makes NEOLAiA a proper European university. Mobility is in our DNA here at NEOLAiA, if you want to put it that way. It lets students and staff get involved in international activities while still being part of their home institutions. This helps to create an open and collaborative environment, which is really important for making sure European higher education is strong and competitive.
What benefits do mobility programmes bring to the home and host institutions?
I think we’ve already mentioned loads of positive facts. Mobility enriches both sending and receiving institutions. Hosts gain diverse perspectives and increased visibility, while sending institutions benefit from the upskilling of their students and staff. The mutual exchange of ideas and practices boosts innovation and quality in teaching and research.
But what I’ll highlight here is the scale of our cooperation. I’m really pleased to say that even though there are still some barriers and obstacles, we’re growing a lot in terms of mobility.
Compared to the baseline described in the project proposal, we have tripled the number of student and staff mobilities within NEOLAiA in the academic year 2023/24. There’s no doubt that this is a really positive result of NEOLAiA and the shared commitment of WP4 and all the people at our universities.
In the years to come, we’ll see more and more of a mix of physical and digital formats, greater inclusivity, and a stronger focus on sustainability, which is the key question for all universities in Europe. I think we can expect to see mobilities moving away from year- or semester-long exchanges towards shorter, more flexible and competence-driven formats.
What are the next steps in expanding mobility opportunities within NEOLAiA? How do you see mobility evolving in the upcoming years?
We’re planning to expand successful pilots, increase virtual and blended offers, add more recognised exchange courses including micro-credentials, and launch new traineeships and staff mobility schemes. WP4 is also working on getting better all the time, by getting feedback and working together with the other WPs.
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Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.
