AE-Knowledge Hub (AEKH-Wrocław) #

Photo gallery: Opening Ceremony at the City Hall
Photo gallery: Press Conference and Ribbon Ceremony
Photo gallery: Working Lunch
Photo gallery: Board Meeting in the AE Wroclaw Hub City Hall Office


Launching of the Academia Europaea Knowledge Hub – Wroclaw, 16 December, 2011

The Board of Trustees of Academia Europaea is pleased to announce the establishment of an exciting new facility in the City of Wroclaw, Poland.

This new Centre of the Academia Europaea will be known as the AE-Knowledge Hub (AEKH-Wrocław) and will start its academic operations at the beginning of 2012.

The facility has been established with the generous support of the Mayor and the City authorities of Wroclaw and will provide the Academia with a focus point for future development of high-level Academic activities and a point of contact for strengthening of European relationships between Academic Communities. It is envisaged that the Hub will develop a range of high-quality international activities including for example; summer schools, conferences, workshops and other interdisciplinary project based initiatives. It will also support and eventually take over the content provision for AE-INFO at www.Ae-info.org. The Hub will provide a new dynamic centre to support European scholarship and excellence across all disciplines. It will also help to maintain science integrity in the best traditions of European science and scholarship.

To celebrate the launch the City Mayor Dr R. Dutkiewicz MAE (Hon) invited members of the Board and outstanding persons from the Universities in Wroclaw to present their views on the new extension of Academia Europaea in the City Hall (see photo gallery 1), followed by a press conference and a ribbon cutting ceremony (see photo gallerey 2) jointly with the President of the Academia Europaea, Lars Walloe, and an extensive working lunch (see photo gallery 3).

In the afternoon, a first working meeting in the building that will house the Wroclaw AE staff took place: the office of AE is located just opposite the City Hall, in the building that also houses the Wroclaw Academic Hub http://wah.wroc.pl/ headed by Maciej Litwin (see photo gallery 4). The staff working for the Academy will be employed by the Wroclaw Convention Bureau headed by Magdalena Piasecka, who also introduced the first permanent staff member working for AE, Ms Katarzyna Majkowska. She will be joined by a second person Ms Marta Tarnowska in February or March 2012. The Convention Bureau http://www.convention.wroclaw.pl - a specialised Wroclaw large-scale service for organising conferences, meeting and exhibitions – will be the AEKH partner and project operator on the City side. In the evening, the mayor of Wroclaw invited board members to a concert to the Wrocław philharmonics (that was started by an address by the mayor and the AE president! The famous Brahms “Gaudeamus Igitur” Overture dedicated to the Wroclaw University by the composer), followed by a cocktail reception.

The opportunity to have the full board of Academia Europaea (with the exception of Vice president who reported the date-conflict with other duties) in one place also meant that the opening ceremony was preceded and followed by a regular board meeting in a seminar room in the Wroclaw Academic Hub. Among other items it was decided that one of the staff would be trained by staff from Graz to be able to take over a substantial part of editing activities on the AE-INFO server mentioned above.

Overall, the opening was considered a “decisive step in the development of Academia Europaea” by all concerned: The Hub is the next step towards placing the Academia at the heart of the European effort to create a genuine European Research, Education and Innovation Space - as the organisation which recognises genuine international excellence in individual scholarship and which supports the culture of European research through dialogue and collaboration. The AE is aiming at providing truly pan-European multidisciplinary academic dimension by filling the gaps between nationally recognised academic excellence and the excellence of the learned and specialist societies and organisations.