University of Silesia in Katowice

The First Annual Transform4Europe PhD Conference was held on 8-9 December 2021, with its virtual host Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”. This online international multidisciplinary conference under the title Societal Transformations and Sustainable Development with Respect to Environment in the Post Covid-19 Digital Era featured 12 keynote speakers and more than 70 doctoral students and early-stage academics from more than 10 universities from different countries, representing three continents – Europe, Asia and South America.

Transform4Europe is an international EU Project carried out by 7 university partners, which under the European Universities Initiative of the European Commission have set themselves the ambitious aim to forge a new type of transnational interuniversity collaboration and contribute to the development of the European Education Area.

In his inaugural speech, Acad. Prof. Nikolay Denkov, Minister of Education and Science of the Republic of Bulgaria expressed the full support of the institution for the initiative, emphasising that the project is fully aligned with the Bulgarian higher education strategy. ‘Together we can make European universities competitive to those from the rest of the world, setting a new type of cooperation among higher education institutions’, said Acad. Prof. Denkov.

Prof. Dr. Maria Stoicheva, Functional Vice-Rector of International Relations at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, said that ‘This first joint event aimed at the third cycle of higher education unites us and we start working together with a common vision of the future of higher education in Europe’.

Altogether 12 visionary keynote speeches and 60 PhD papers representing different stage of doctoral research were delivered in the three areas targeted by the project – Societal transformation, community building and inclusion; Environmental transformation and sustainability; Digital transformation and smart regions.

Each PhD participant had the opportunity to present their topic within one of the 16 thematic sessions under the focus areas in English or Spanish. The participants will receive a certificate jointly issued by the T4E Alliance Universities and the delivered papers will be published in a conference proceedings volume after scientific review.

You can watch at the opening ceremony of the First Annual Transform4Europe PhD Conference 2021: https://fb.watch/a00HZLpjZF/

Additional information: The Transform4Europe Alliance comprises of seven universities: Saarland University (Germany), The University of Alicante (Spain), The Estonian Academy of Arts (Estonia), The University of Silesia in Katowice (Poland), Sofia University St. Kliment Ohridski (Bulgaria), The University of Trieste (Italy), Vytautas Magnus University in Kaunas (Lithuania). More information about the project can be found at: http://www.transform4europe.eu/