Alliances and Partnerships: Strategic Global Alliances

In an increasingly insular world, the overarching aim of Sciences Po’s international policy is to expand and consolidate our role as a university open to and engaged with the rest of the world, addressing the emerging issues of the century. In that context, we aim to:

• Maintain our position at the centre of an international network and our role as a spearhead of European and international alliances addressing key 21st-century issues.
• Sustain and nurture the European ideal, and help build its identity, particularly through our network of 170 partner universities in Europe and our role in the European university alliance CIVICA.

CIVICA, the European University of the Social Sciences

Sciences Po is a founding member and the institutional coordinator of CIVICA - the European University of the Social Sciences.

CIVICA is an alliance of ten European higher education institutions in the social sciences, humanities, business management and public policy, with a total of 72,000 students and PhD candidates and 13,000 academic staff.

Its members are Bocconi University (Italy), Central European University (Austria), IE University (Spain), the European University Institute (Italy), the Hertie School (Germany), the Școala Națională de Studii Politice și Administrative din București (Romania), the Stockholm School of Economics (Sweden), Szkoła Główna Handlowa w Warszawie (SGH, Poland) and the London School of Economics and Political Science (United Kingdom).

Together, these institutions form an inter-university campus built around joint teaching, research, and educational innovation. CIVICA's aim is to foster academic excellence and civic engagement, and to reinforce the role of the social sciences in understanding and addressing current and future challenges. Sharing a commitment to academic freedom, independence, diversity and inclusion, CIVICA’s members work collectively to produce analyses and propose solutions to contemporary societal challenges. The alliance has four thematic priorities: societal transitions and environmental crises; the challenges of democracy in the 21st century; the evolution of the European Union; the impact of new technologies and digital tools on the social sciences.

Created in 2019, CIVICA was selected by the European Commission to receive funding as part of the European Universities initiative, supported by the Erasmus+ programme. In 2022, after a successful first phase, the Commission confirmed a further four years of funding for the alliance, with the support of Erasmus+ and in conjunction with other funding programmes.

The U7+ Alliance

Spearheaded by Sciences Po in June 2019, the U7+ Alliance is now a coalition of more than 100 university presidents at leading institutions in more than 15 countries across all five continents. Its member universities pledge to take concrete action to address the major global challenges of our time, particularly by lobbying government leaders in the G7 nations and beyond. U7+ is the first coalition of university presidents aimed at structuring and advancing the pivotal role of higher education institutions in the multilateral agenda.

Members of the U7+ Alliance meet every year ahead of the G7 summit to identify priority areas for their work, in line with contemporary societal challenges, and to draw up a joint action plan.

These challenges include: climate change and energy transition; the impact of technological innovation; inequality and the role of higher education in combating polarisation within society.

More recently, Alliance members have identified four priority areas: peace and security; access to higher education in the Global South; academic freedom and freedom of expression; the work of the G7.

The Global Alliance of Universities on Climate (GAUC)

Sciences Po is a member of the GAUC climate alliance created in 2019, which now has 15 partner universities in nine countries across six continents. These include the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge in the UK, Yale, MIT, UC Berkeley and Columbia University in the US, together with the University of Tokyo, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, the Indian Institute of Science, Stellenbosch University in South Africa and the Australian National University. The alliance is chaired by Tsinghua University in Beijing, which also houses the alliance secretariat, and co-chaired by the London School of Economics and Political Science.

The GAUC’s mission is to advance solutions to climate change through research, education and public outreach, while partnering with governments, NGOs and businesses to promote practical implementation.

The GAUC fosters collaboration and dialogue between its member universities, and strives to be a leader on climate in higher education and research.

The GAUC has several strategic objectives: to develop bilateral and multilateral collaborative research between its members; to train the climate leaders of tomorrow; to accelerate energy transition on university campuses; to promote the active participation of all parts of society in efforts to combat climate change.

Other alliances

• The Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs - APSIA: The Sciences Po Paris School of International Affairs (PSIA) is a member of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA). APSIA is an alliance of 60 institutions in the Americas, Asia and Europe, which have achieved global recognition for the excellence of their teaching in international affairs.
• The Global Public Policy Network: The GPPN was founded in 2005 by the Sciences Po School of Public Affairs, Columbia School of International and Public Affairs, and the LSE School of Public Policy. Since then, the University of Tokyo (Japan), FGV-EAESP (Brazil), the Hertie School (Germany) and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy (Singapore) have joined this influential network. Work by the GPPN steers research into public policy and informs teaching of students aspiring to work in the field.