On June 17, 2024, the heads of Bochum’s universities and research institutions as well as other stakeholders met with mayor Thomas Eiskirch in the historic town hall to jointly found our association UniverCity Bochum e.V.. Our association builds on many years of networking between the founding members. The aim is to jointly strengthen and further develop Bochum as a city of knowledge.
“By founding UniverCity Bochum e.V., we are sending a clear signal about the importance of education, research and innovation in our city. The association creates the necessary structures to promote an open knowledge culture in our city and to develop new solutions together,” says mayor Thomas Eiskirch, who will be active on our board as a representative of the city of Bochum. He is convinced: “This not only strengthens Bochum’s position as a city of knowledge, but also adds values for the entire city society. Bochum will become an even more vibrant and diverse place that effectively meets the challenges of our time.”
Creating dialog and participation
Encounter, exchange and cooperation – this is important to all our association members. The association therefore focuses on the development and implementation of dialog-oriented and participative project formats. Our main areas of work are divided into innovation and transformation venues, education and opportunity venues and event and networking venues in order to develop target group-oriented offers. These include qualification programs for employees from science, municipalities and business, practical learning formats for students and scientific participation formats for citizens. In addition, as a partner institution in the Haus des Wissens we work on the content of the house and design the respective annual programs together with the vhs Bochum and the city library.
Broad support and initial projects
Christina Reinhardt, Chancellor of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum, is looking forward to the future of UniverCity: “The founding of UniverCity Bochum e.V. marks an important step in the cooperation between science and the city. The collaboration and the associated mutual exchange and learning process is the key to developing innovative and sustainable solutions for our city. We look forward to the joint projects and the diverse impulses that will arise from them.”
The UniverCity Bochum network emerged in 2009 from the former Bochum-hoch-vier university network. Over the course of time, we have repeatedly undergone further strategic developments in order to adapt our offering and focus on current needs and developments. With the current strategic realignment, we are now breaking new grounds as an independent association and taking up current developments in science, science funding and knowledge-based urban development.
