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 2025 Programme:
The Residential School Alumni Network will organise two webinars and one face-to-face workshop in 2025 under the following overarching theme:
Remodelling professional services in universities
The three events will focus on the many challenges and opportunities associated with the modern world that all senior leaders and managers currently experience in their universities:
- Supporting democracy on campus: freedom of speech in safe environments
- Dealing with dis- and misinformation
- Using Artificial Intelligence responsibly
- Promoting all aspects of sustainability, social, economic, environmental
- Managing risks effectively to safeguard the reputation of the institution
How does this influence universities’ strategic positions and the dynamics of university leadership? What are the implications for the delivery of professional services? How can we develop a new approach to knowledge exchange and upskilling our staff to work with technology and Artificial Intelligence in the digital Age?
The first webinar on 6 February 2025 will focus on how universities can enhance their communication, making effective use of new technologies and working with Artificial Intelligence.
We will among others discuss the following issues:
- Interacting with internal stakeholders, systematically and structurally
- Interacting with the outside world and external stakeholders
- Building internal capacity and highly specialised expertise
- Staff upskilling to communicate in the digital Age
The second webinar on 4 December 2025 will focus on delivering efficient professional services under tight budgets.
Under the overarching theme “Remodelling professional services in universities” the webinar will focus on how universities can deliver professional services in new ways to support education, research and outreach.
Decreasing public funding in many European HE systems and the fast growth of Artificial Intelligence are posing major challenges to universities, but they also offer new opportunities to reconfigurate professional services, with more limited budgets.
New models can be designed to improve operational efficiency and effectiveness, streamlining processes to avoid potential service duplication and reduce costs, while reorganising routine staff for more qualitative work. All require a change of mindset and major staff upskilling and reskilling for leaders and managers to take initiatives to design new solutions rather than these being imposed on them through financial cuts.
Registration for the December webinar is open here and more information is available here plus the speakers can be seen 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 from previous Alumni only events
Registered participants for each event will get the password to access the resources that have been made available.
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