Good morning everyone, welcome to UR podcast of UNIGE radio, from the University of Genoa, the harbour of your voice. My name is Marta, I am a student of UNIGE, attending the last year of the bachelor in “diplomatic and international sciences” and today I am here to introduce you to my trip journal to event ESA 2023. Don’ t worry if you don’ t know what I am talking about, that’ s what I am here for! And so, in this first episode I am going to explain to you what is ESA 2023 and how have I got to know about it. Let’ s begin then!
It all started in end of November 2022, when I was scrolling through the upcoming events of Ulysseus, among which there was a highlighted message, stating: “Registration to the European Students Assembly 2023”. Just a quick detour for those who do not know what Ulysseus is, it is an international and entrepreneurial European University and European students’ alliance, that aims to shape the new generations to become citizens of the world. It is build upon 5 key goals, that will help contribute to tackling today’ s main issues and prepare European citizens for an increasingly complex and dynamic society. In order to fulfil these goals, Ulysseus has build up a both territorial and digital innovation ecosystem. More precisely, Ulysseus is funded on the collaboration between 6 Universities, dislocated in different regions of Europe, with a specific innovation hub in each one of these. The fruitful cooperation between these hubs has made it possible to develop new transnational academic offers, such as joint and double degrees, short courses, language courses and summits. In this way, Ulysseus has created a great community that will contribute to the modernisation and digital transition of each university, connecting different regions of Europe and gathering the best of each one of these, putting diversity at the very heart of this project.
Fun fact, UNIGE is one of these 6 virtuous Universities and it has been a great honour, and a huge luck for me have the possibility to take part in the first international and official students’ summit in Seville last year in December. Since then, I’ ve grown more and more fond of this open-to-the-world project, participating in various following events and trying to get more and more involved in the community of Ulysseus, also staying updated about the various new events.
So here we go back to the start, to when I have found about the ESA on Ulysseus website. The European Student Assembly (ESA) is a new grassroots project that yearly gathers more than 200 students from most European University Alliances (such as Ulysseus) to debate current issues, draft political recommendations for the future of Europe and advocate them among stakeholders and decision makers. It is one of the most prestigious projects of the European Universities Community (EUC), and it is entirely designed and implemented by a steering committee composed of students and academic and non academic staff members from different higher education institutions. This year’ s edition is going to be the second one, and the debate is going to be focused on the following 10 topics:
Deliberative versus representative democracy? How to reduce the gap between citizens and policy-makers and create a more united Europe?
Lessons from the past? How could the French-German history of reconciliation serve as a model to overcome conflicts and build unity?
How to secure fair and sustainable access to energy in Europe at different levels?
From farm to fork. How can local food distribution channels contribute to a fairer and more sustainable European food system?
Taking better care of each other. What should be the European approach to mental health?
How to ensure a fair and sustainable digital transition in a context of exploding demand and raw material scarcity?
Is the EU in a position to develop an efficient foreign policy and an autonomous defence policy that would ensure the safety of its citizens?
Cities of the future. How could sustainable cities contribute in European autonomy and people welfare?
Excellence versus inclusion? How can European universities contribute to provide a more inclusive access to skills and knowledge?
European Year of Skills – What role can higher education institutions play in reducing the skills gap in Europe?
The expected outcome is a production of recommendations on the 10 debating topics, collected during the debating sessions by the students. These will have the chance to advocate and disseminate their proposals among various actors such as municipalities, companies, NGOs, who are active at different levels of the European political life, and are going to be invited to and take part in the different dissemination events gathering stakeholders, decision makers and students.
It goes without saying that when I first discovered about the existence of this event and I realised that I could have the possibility of taking part through Ulysseus, my excitement was rocketing high at the speed of light! I would have had the chance to go to the European parliament in Strasbourg and to contribute to the fostering of the new spirit of Europe, collaborating with many international students as excited, enthusiastic and proactive as I am.
And so, even if the application deadline for the registration to ESA was already pretty near, I decided to take the chance and contact immediately all the coordinators and referees of the Ulysseus project in the University of Genoa, to get them to know about the ESA, and ask for their consent and sustain for my participation. At the beginning I was pretty sure that it would have been smooth and easy to get a positive response, but as the days went by and many bureaucratic obstacles (also unnecessary and void ones) started to arise, I began to see my goal of participating to ESA getting further, to the point of having to give up on it. As a matter of fact, the deadline for the application expired, without me being able to get the approval of my own university, due to a massive disorganisation and lack of communication.
I felt really disappointed and left behind by the one institution that I had always considered, up to that moment, to be instead a place of growth and empowerment. Moreover, I had to reshape and give up on my initial excitement and motivation, which is not something easy to do when you really believe in something and you would be ready to firmly commit yourself to it. The easiest way was to forget about the ESA, forget about Ulysseus and get back to my daily life, without any further engagements.
So now you may ask yourself, how is it possible then that I am here, now, talking to you about the ESA and Ulysseus if I had given up on it? As I said at the beginning, it was just the end of last year, so in the mean time 6 months have gone by and many things have changed...
If you want to know more about the plot-twists of my experience, about Ulysseus and about the ESA, stay updated for the next podcasts episodes.
This is Rocket to #ESA2023 on UR podcast, the podcast platform of Unige Radio, the voice of University of Genoa. To comment or contact us, write to
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