Europe and Equal and Sustainable Infrastructures – LERU Conference 2011

This week, some students from the University of Geneva will represent their university at LERU Bright Student Conference 2011 at Lund University – Campus Helsingborg. The last recent years, the students of the European Institute have also taken part in the 2010 Conference in Munich with regard to « University Teaching in Europe: Challenges and Perspectives » and in the 2009 Conference in Milano dealing with « Food and Water: an Increasing Challenge ». This year, the European Institute delegation including Louis Lepioufle, Georgiana Tudos and myself will discuss with students from universities from all around Europe the Equal and Sustainable Infrastructures with regard to these objectives:

“Infrastructure is traditionally understood as the basic infrastruc­tures needed for societies to conduct and facilitate both services and the manufacturing of goods.

This conference at Lund Uni­versity aims to break away from the traditional thinking of infrastructure and cover new perspectives on abstract industries such as banking, energy and waste management. Sometimes less focused upon in political agendas but still of crucial importance in our discussions are the soft sectors such as health care, social and cultural infrastructures. All of these demand our attention as they try to reinvent, rethink and reshape in equal and sustainable ways.

Our goal is to create an opportunity for you as a student to channel your knowledge and experience into a field of immediate importance. It is quite possible that the outcome of this conference will directly affect the development of new creative approaches to solving modern infrastructural problems.”

A LERU Bright Student Conference Bright, is “a three-day conference in which students from twenty-one European universities, all participating in the League of European Research Universities, will discuss various topics concerning the political, economic, and social future of Europe. Every year, the conference will be organised by another member of the League and a relevant issue or challenge will be chosen to play a central role in the conference. ”

By mixing workshops and leisure activities, this conference is an excellent opportunity for combining different working backgrounds and for collaborating with students from different European countries.