The INVITED project aims to:

• support higher education institutions in fulfilling their social responsibility to reflect societal diversity in their student and staff body, as well as to cater to the needs of diverse groups and contribute to higher attainment among underrepresented groups (Bologna process commitment);
• facilitate policy development through dialogue between relevant stakeholders (universities, ministries, funders, NGOs, associations representing disadvantaged or less represented groups) at the system level to promote appropriate regulatory and funding frameworks that empower universities to fulfil this responsibility.

More specifically, the project aims to:

• create a knowledge base to better identify and understand the important issues universities face with regard to diversity, equity and inclusion;
• raise awareness about the topic, as well as identify and give visibility to existing practices;
• provide project participants with an opportunity to exchange experiences with strategic relevance and learn from each other;
• formulate and promote recommendations for institutions for the development and implementation of strategies for diversity management;
• develop - if and where appropriate - recommendations to policy makers at the relevant levels.

To achieve these objectives, the project will have several milestones including a short survey for universities, combined with follow-up interviews with a small sample of respondents. A series of events will follow, such as a peer learning seminar for university leaders and practitioners at the European level, as well as system-level workshops organised in collaboration with national university associations to facilitate concrete policy development. A publication will give an overview of the results of the survey and the events.

INVITED Peer Learning Seminar, 14 June 2019, hosted by University College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

The INVITED consortium organised a peer learning seminar with more than 30 university leaders and managers from 15 countries to discuss their strategies towards equity, diversity and inclusion, exchange good practices and learn from each other. On this occasion also the preliminary results of the INVITED survey with data from more than 160 higher education institutions from 36 European systems were presented.

The INVITED project is jointly conducted by EUA and the European Universities Continuing Education Network (EUCEN) with support from the European Students’ Union (ESU).