Action Plan for International Knowledge Cooperation
Platform for international cooperation 2025-2030
HVL will, together with regional and international partners, contribute to solving the major global challenges. Our expertise in innovation, applied research, education, and lifelong learning makes HVL the preferred academic partner in Western Norway, and a key actor in regional and European transformation.
It is a priority for Norwegian authorities to increase cooperation with Europe, and it is important for all of us that the European project succeeds. Europe needs a transformation and demonstrates this through increased focus on reskilling, upskilling and further education on one hand, and on innovation and competitiveness on the other. HVL, as a professional and career-oriented university, with close ties to regional development both in research and education, serves as a link between these two priority areas, both regionally and in Europe.
HVL will see collaboration with excellent partners worldwide within our academic priority areas. HVL will follow up on the Norwegian Panorama strategy by identifying the best partners for HVL's initiatives globally. However, international academic collaboration should not only be based on what benefits HVL.
We also have a responsibility as an academic institution to contribute to the world and to help solve global challenges. Through solidarity, capacity building, and research and education in and about sustainability, HVL will take on its global responsibility and promote academic freedom.
The world around us is changing, and the higher education sector is increasingly influenced by geopolitical rivalry, a global race on technology and competence, and pressure on academic values. Our international engagement should support our uniqueness and contribute to the development of HVL and the region, but it should also be responsible and consider the new risk landscape in our sector.
With a more strategic approach to international collaboration, HVL will meet the challenges and seize the opportunities.
This will be achieved through three main steps
Building Up Academic Initiatives
A key challenge moving forward will be to prioritize resources, both academically and administratively, to achieve HVL's goals. The focus of HVL’s international knowledge collaboration should be on what HVL aims to achieve, both at the institutional and the faculty level. This will enable the use of various tools, different funding schemes for projects, student exchanges, staff exchanges, and network activities, to build up around academic communities and initiatives.
HVL will define academic priority areas, allocate resources to these, and develop a portfolio of international partnerships, projects, and networks around them.
Developing Deep Partnerships
HVL will work more strategically with international knowledge collaboration by developing selected deeper partnerships at the institutional level. This is in addition to individual researchers' freedom to seek academic international collaborations.
By identifying and focusing on selected institutional partners where HVL collaborates on research and innovation, education, and exchange, barriers can be reduced, synergies created, and long-term goals identified. This applies to collaborations both within and outside Europe, preferably with participants from the public and private sectors in our region. The ARTEMIS alliance will be particularly important for HVL in the coming years.
Building International Partnerships For and With Our Region
HVL has strong bonds to our region and will continue to play a central role in regional development and in strengthening innovation and competitiveness in Western Norway. International knowledge collaboration is a natural part of this. HVL will act as a door opener for public and private sector in our region and form regional teams to increase impact in international education, research, and innovation projects.
We will also develop internship schemes in companies and institutions in Western Norway for international students, and abroad for HVL students. HVL will follow local businesses out into the world and bring international partners and insights back to the region.