Initiating a Sports and Exercise Sciences Community (SESC) in the T4EU Alliance (SESC@T4EU)

This proposal aims to establish a Sports and Exercise Sciences Community (SESC) within the T4EU European university alliance by initiating collaboration among three alliance member universities with well-developed programs in Sports and Exercise Sciences (SES): Université Jean-Monnet Saint-Étienne, Univerza na Primorskem, and Universität des Saarlandes. The project seeks to initiate a robust partnership, leveraging the combined expertise of these institutions to create a set of exemplary programmes that will reinforce the educational and research capabilities of the alliance in the SES field. To foster the development of this SES community, the project is to involve several faculty members of each participating SES department in a series of relatively accessible educational collaborations, such as hybrid course-sharing, organising and promoting student mobilities, or co-supervising PhDs, thereby creating the opportunity for them to work together and to share resources. These actions provide a first opportunity for participating faculty to meet and work together in a team-building process, all while implementing actions corresponding to T4EU educational objectives. Master-level collaborations include course-sharing, student exchanges and an assessment of interconnections and synergies between programs in view of a future joint programme. PhD-level collaborations will involve co-supervision of theses, PhD mobilities, and the exploration of joint PhD programs, aligning with T4EU’s upcoming policies. These collaborations are expected to reinforce the diversity, the excellence and the attractivity of the participating programmes, as well as testing a novel approach to reinforcing inter-university integration within the T4EU alliance. The proposed SES community is expected to expand over time, developing research projects, incorporating new partners and exploring interdisciplinary connections with other fields.