Tag Archives: higher-education

by Alexandra den Heijer

… for another campus update. While overheated and underutilized are keywords for many (European) campuses this summer, I will use the calm before the storm – of a new academic year – to write an update about our campus research.

Summary, since my last post:

• In 2020/2021 we interviewed the Dutch universities about how the COVID-19 effects on Campus NL – results are published in the book “Campus of the future – managing a matter of solid, liquid and gas”, which was updated in 2025 and is freely downloadable, and in a journal paper – for Dutch readers, lessons were summarized in articles and book chapters
• In 2021/2022, our smart campus research gained relevance in the post-pandemic era – the hybrid university community that increasingly worked and studied off-campus challenged the allocation of space – Bart Valks defended his thesis about smart campus tools, based on many journal articles
• In 2022/2023, our longitudinal Campus NL research, describing past, present and future campus strategies for Dutch universitie (see page CAMPUS NL), restarted with a 4-year project
• In 2023/2024, we focused on hybrid working and university office utilization, resulting in a 277-page Campus NL annual report and various papers and articles (link to example)
• In 2024/2025, we shifted our focus to (the use of) learning environments, resulting in a 241-page Campus NL annual report and various papers that are in the publishing process
• In 2025/2026, we zoomed out to multifunctionality on campus and the shared use of laboratories – to identify the most important trends and challenges, we interviewed all Dutch universities again, on their own campuses – publications will follow soon

While Campus NL was the core of our data collection, we never lost track of international campus trends, strengthening ties with (university and campus) networks in especially Germany (HIS-HE), Switzerland, UK-Ireland (AUDE) and Nordic university networks. This was also reflected in our campus research team, with both European and non-European researchers and visiting peers and PhD researchers.

There are three upcoming conferences to strengthen the European campus network in the next 2 months (attended by members of our campus research team):

• Transdisciplinary Workplace Research (TWR) conference, 2-5 September 2026 in Zürich, exchanging (campus) knowledge between European scholars, also about the changing (academic) workplace – see https://www.zhaw.ch/de/lsfm/institute-zentren/ifm/veranstaltungen/twr2026
• European University Association / EUA’s Funding Forum, 14-16 October 2026 – see conference website
• European Universities Estates Conference / EUEC, 21-22 October 2026 – see conference website

Our lessons will be shared in our upcoming publications and next posts, either on LinkedIn (group “Campus Europe“) or with another update – to be continued!