Erasmus Verbindt
The university-wide student initiative Erasmus Verbindt (Dutch for ‘Erasmus Connects’) explores, strengthens and intensifies the relationship between the Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR) and the city of Rotterdam. With this initiative, EUR-students want to actively contribute to the translation of academic insights into societal improvement.
How can we ensure that challenges, knowledge and information from the city and its region continue to find their way to our university? And how do we ensure that academic insights reach those very places in the city where they can generate a positive impact? That is the core of Erasmus Verbindt (EV) and the main focus of our interdisciplinary student teams. At the university, EV is linked to various research and education initiatives, study associations, and a number of related projects that are part of the university’s Strategy 2020-2024 agenda. In the city we closely collaborate with our societal partners, such as the municipality of Rotterdam (Gemeente Rotterdam) and the regional broadcasting agency (Omroep Rijnmond).
Erasmus Verbindt operates on the basis of a network and connection method through which we, as a student community, aspire to build bridges between the university and the city in a smart and meaningful way. We do this in three closely intertwined tracks that allow us to explore, strengthen and intensify the relationship between the university and the city of Rotterdam.
These three tracks each center around a specific domain: Metropolitan Challenges, Social Inequality, Sustainability, and Health. Within these domains, EUR-students will search for meaningful connections between socially engaged scholars at the EUR and Rotterdam’s many diverse inhabitants, initiatives and organisations that are committed to a better, fairer, greener and healthier Rotterdam.
In doing so, we aim to inspire, support and learn from each other. As such, we strive towards building future-proof networks, in which the academic community of the EUR is closely intertwined with the city of Rotterdam, so that we may grow collectively to face the many challenges that lie ahead together.
