Local university alliances, capital cities, and the ‘New Geography of Knowledge’ in Europe
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Lise Moawad
The rise of university alliances has become a defining feature of the contemporary European higher education landscape. While transnational partnerships that have emerged through programs such as the European Universities Initiative (Gunn 2020) have received much attention, local university alliances, especially those based in capital cities, remain relatively understudied. These local configurations are especially complex as they operate simultaneously across multiple scales: urban, national, European, and global. But as such, they constitute privileged sites for examining how universities, cities, and policy actors jointly construct institutional narratives in an increasingly interconnected academic environment.
This post brings together the results of two complementary empirical studies conducted as part of the ‘Matters of Research Assessment and its Implementation (MAI)’ project at the Robert K. Merton Center for Science Studies (2023-2026). By examining the various forms of academic collaboration, including local university alliances, we bring to the fore the idea of a ‘New Geography of Knowledge’ in Europe, where discourse matters almost as much as the decisions taken.
Knowledge metropolises in the making
The first study, co-authored with Cornelia Schendzielorz, focuses on two emblematic cases, the Berlin University Alliance (BUA) and Paris Sciences et Lettres (PSL), analysed as objects of local, national, and European knowledge policy strategies. Drawing on desk-based document analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, we examine the roles and functions attributed to these alliances both by the universities themselves and by the cities in which they are embedded. Particular attention is paid to how Berlin and Paris mobilise these alliances to position themselves as “knowledge metropolises.” Our findings reveal that the institutionalisation of BUA and PSL relies on the articulation of diverse ideological repertoires, including narratives of capital-city centrality, international competitiveness, scientific excellence, national identity, and globalisation.
The second study, co-authored with Josepha Gollanek, expands the comparative perspective by analysing eight university alliances and networks located in European capital cities: Lisbon (Consórcio da Região de Lisboa do Projeto Universities Portugal – Connecting Knowledge), Madrid and Barcelona (Alianza 4 Universidades), London (University of London), Paris (Université PSL), Brussels (Brussels University Alliance), Bratislava (Accord Project), Stockholm (University Alliance Stockholm Trio), and Berlin (Berlin University Alliance). Grounded in organisational theory and based on the analysis of public documents and press reports, our research investigates the stated objectives, legitimacy-building strategies, self-evaluations, and success narratives developed by these alliances.
We explore how such organisations establish standards, foster collaboration, and narrate their own effectiveness within evolving higher education governance frameworks. Although the conditions and criteria for success vary considerably across Europe, the differences lie less in the stated objectives than in the extent to which alliances are able to demonstrate that these objectives have been achieved. Media visibility, self-evaluation, and strategic storytelling become essential resources for institutional durability and recognition, creating dynamics akin to a Matthew effect in which already-visible alliances continue to attract attention and legitimacy.
Governing academic assemblages
By bringing out both the diversity and convergence of alliance strategies across European capitals, these two studies aim to provide a better understanding of the territorialisation of higher education governance and the growing role of metropolitan knowledge politics in Europe. Together, they reveal that local university alliances are more than administrative or academic coordination. Instead, they function as multi-scale political and symbolic assemblages where cities and universities negotiate their visibility and legitimacy. Their success obviously depends on financial resources, institutional structures, and stakeholder support, but also on political expectations that are harder to grasp.
Our findings also underline several major challenges facing local university alliances. First, these organisations must constantly negotiate tensions between cooperation and competition. While alliances are intended to create synergies, pool resources, and increase institutional visibility, they are simultaneously shaped by highly competitive academic environments and by pressures to conform to dominant models of excellence. Second, the pursuit of harmonisation and institutional integration may come at the cost of diversity (Benneworth 2019). Our results suggest that reducing institutional plurality risks reinforcing a narrow and normative conception of higher education centred on already prestigious models and actors.
Above all, the most significant (and unsolved) issue seems to be governance itself. We demonstrate that the careful balance between autonomy, consolidation, collaboration, and competition (Nelles 2012) is complicated by historical legacies, political cultures, organisational asymmetries, and spatial layouts that vary widely among cases. These layered dimensions make it hard to classify such alliances using simple typologies, but also show why a historical, geographical, and discursive approach is crucial to analyse them. Ultimately, local university alliances are policy constructs that make ongoing changes in the rescaling of scientific competition in Europe visible.
Lise Moawad is finishing her PhD in Sociology at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, where she focuses on the political uses of the social sciences. She is also a research fellow at the Robert K. Merton Center for Science Studies, currently working on a project examining the evaluation and governance of research collaborations. She was previously involved in a research project at the same centre focusing on the societal impact of research. Before entering academia, she worked for the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She won the Evidence & Policy 2025 Carol Weiss Prize for the article ‘Social studies, technology assessment and the pandemic: a comparative analysis of social studies-based policy advice in PTA institutions in France, Germany and the UK during the COVID-19 crisis‘.
References
Benneworth, P. (2019). Mergers in higher education. Towards a conceptual framework. In L. Cremonini, S. Paivandi & K. M. Joshi (Eds.), Mergers in Higher Education: Practices and Policies (pp.1–18). Studera Press.
Gunn, A. (2020). The European universities initiative: A study of alliance formation in higher education. In A. Curaj, L. Deca & R Pricopie (Eds). European Higher Education Area: Challenges for a New Decade (pp.13–30). Springer International Publishing.
Moawad, L., & Gollanek, J. (2026). ‘To survive, you must tell stories.’ Comparing success narratives of local university alliances and networks in European capital cities. European Journal of Higher Education, 1-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/21568235.2026.2648833.
Moawad, L., & Schendzielorz, C. (2026). Knowledge metropolises? A comparative multi-scale analysis of local university alliances in capital cities. European Educational Research Journal, OnlineFirst. https://doi.org/10.1177/14749041261437238.
Nelles, J. (2012). Comparative Metropolitan Policy: Governing Beyond Local Boundaries in the Imagined Metropolis. Routledge.