Residential School Alumni Network
Nurturing impactful leadership: HUMANE Residential Schools and the Alumni Network supporting professional development and organisational transformations in universities.
When the Winter School was launched in 2003, HUMANE’s purpose was to “develop a cadre of professional senior university managers and encourage them to network across Europe“.
All Schools are in line with HUMANE’s overall mission to expand international networks in higher education, foster management innovation and drive professional excellence.
The Residential School Alumni network has developed from the Schools and today counts some 800+ members from the universities in the HUMANE network. The network is an important driving force for collaboration across borders in Europe and internationally.
The Residential School Alumni network is managed by a Steering Committee – you can see the current list of committee members here.
The 2026 Programme:
The Residential School Alumni Network will organise two webinars and one face-to-face workshop in 2026 under the following overarching theme:
Change readiness: driving organisational developments
The HUMANE Residential School Alumni Network will organise two webinars and one face-to-face School workshop during the HUMANE Annual Conference in 2026.
In 2025 the Alumni Network focused on remodelling professional services, looking at the many challenges and opportunities that senior leaders and managers experience in their universities: supporting democracy and freedom of speech on campus, dealing with dis- and misinformation and promoting all aspects of sustainability, social, economic, environmental aspects in context of tight budgets. This all requires institutional change readiness, (understanding of the external environment, helping staff become “change ready” and developing organisational agility), which is the overarching theme adopted by the Network Steering Committee for the 2026 events.
Universities are operating in a turbulent and changing world. We need to understand the megatrends that impact the higher education sector, stay in control and act upon these trends: the shifts in global economic powers; global research and knowledge security; changing student demographics; the rise of technology, industry 5.0 and Artificial Intelligence and the changes in the workforce.
The first webinar on 26 February 2026 will focus on these megatrends and on environmental scanning and scenario building approaches in universities to gather and analyse information. This is at the heart of proactive approaches to anticipate future changes and challenges, design institutional strategies and make informed decisions for future developments. Universities also need thorough understanding and mastery of their data and facts as the critical basis for robust data driven decision making, tracking key metrics consistently and implementing feedback loops for continuous improvement.
The face-to-face workshop on 11 June 2026 will focus on people, looking at institutional strategies and approaches to help staff become “change ready”, understand the need to work differently and act proactively to support profound organisational transformations in their institutions.
The second webinar on 26 November 2026 will focus on universities as organisations, looking at institutional approaches to enhance organisational agility as well as practical approaches to innovate in the delivery of professional services.
More information will be available in the coming weeks.
Resources are available from previous Alumni only events
All resources from Alumni webinars and workshops are available to access by Residential School Alumni. They are all password protected – if you would like to have access please contact the Secretariat.
The list of resources available can be accessed: here
Join the Alumni Linkedin group
Keep up to date with events and join in the conversation: here