As the pace of European integration accelerates, decision-makers, opinion-formers, politicians and citizens in European countries increasingly need to 'think European', to transcend national perspectives and empathise with a European mix of national and international cultures.

To meet that challenge, 10 leading European university institutions have jointly set up an association designed to serve as an 'international university without walls', in which future scholars and leaders of our new Europe will have an opportunity to share common learning and confront common concerns together, from a formative age and throughout their active lives.

The members:

• University of Oxford
• Universiteit Leiden
• Universitá di Bologna
• Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn
• Institut Universitaire de Hautes Etudes Internationales, Geneva
• Université Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne
• Univerzita Karlova V Praze
• Universidad Complutense, Madrid
• Helsingin Yliopisto, Helsinki
• Jagiellonian University, Krakow

The Europaeum exists to foster collaborative research and teaching, to provide opportunities for scholars, leaders, academics and graduates, to stage conferences, summer schools and colloquia, and to enable leading figures from the worlds of business, politics and culture to take part in transnational and interdisciplinary dialogue with the world of scholarship. Recent themed programmes have been on The Future of the European University; A TransAtlantic Dialogue; Culture, Humanities and New Technology, and Islam-in-Europe.

The association operates flexibly, responsibly and simply – with a minimum of bureaucracy and complexity. Small internal grants promote the mission of the association.

All events aim to include professors from three or more partner institutions, while remaining open and ready to work alongside any other bodies or experts. The Europaeum now encompasses all those in Social Sciences and the Humanities, and more recently, experts in Science History and Science Policy.

Longer-terms aims encompass jointly-offered teaching programmes, developing capacity for policy-related work, an internet-based knowledge centre promoting international academic collaboration, as well as new linked scholarship and visiting professorship schemes.

Above all the Europaeum aims to add to the sum knowledge about – and for – the new Europe, to help prepare the future citizens and leaders of – and for – Europe, ensure that all partner universities are fully engaged in both explaining and making Europe's future, and to leave all those involved in the Europaeum with an enlarged ‘sense of Europe’.