Azioni di public engagement per un nuovo modello di Civic University a Bologna

The history of the oldest university in the western world has always intersected with that of the city in which the Studio Bolognese arose through the spontaneous initiative of a few students and with which the municipality soon forged a strong bond that made it possible to bring knowledge to every place in the city. Since then, social, economic and cultural events have variously modified the medieval “town and gown” paradigm, which in Anglo-Saxon literature refers to those interactions between town and university, already present also in the city of Bologna, generating over time opportunities but also threats. The challenge that the University of Bologna takes up today is to reaffirm its role as the custodian of knowledge understood as the most valuable public good and to reclaim its role as a privileged interlocutor to consolidate and innovate collaborations with every stakeholder in society; it can do so by using a joint approach for public engagement actions that are geared to the exchange of knowledge and the definition of co-designed processes for the generation of social, economic and cultural impact, enabling all city institutions to respond to the needs of society as a whole. This envisions a new model of Civic University capable of co-generating public value together with the city in which it operates through quality teaching-learning and research excellence.