Connecting Cities and Universities at Strategic Frontiers - 7-9 October, 2015, Catania, Italy

Strand 2 - the challenges of (e)migration focuses on:

• How populations can build sustainable economies on existing strengths and resources

• The challenges of new immigrant populations.

We are asking contributors have courage to consider the tougher problem of the reasons people are leaving their homes en masse and what can be done? What governments and employers should be doing to make that unnecessary? Currently the focus is solely on what to do about those who have already had to leave.

For any colleagues not familiar with it, University World News is an excellent Website to access for its weekly update on universities worldwide.

Fomento de San Sebastian, the economic development agency for the city of San Sebastian, is launching a new edition of the Internationalisation Grant Programme for local young graduates to do an internship at an international organization.

On the 15th of April, 2015, at the annual Scottish Economics Society (held in Perth, Scotland), Professor Robert Wright (University of Strathclyde) and Urban Big Data Centre researcher Dr Catherine Lido (University of Glasgow) presented a paper series, including the work of UBDC Co-I Professor Mike Osborne (University of Glasgow) and Dr Georgios Panos (University of Glasgow), regarding financial literacy.

For the second year running I had the pleasure of attending the Cork Lifelong Learning Festival. Because of a previous appointment, I had missed the UNESCO Growing Learning in Cork event and had only the Thursday and the Friday to enjoy the proceedings, being picked up at the airport on a wet and miserable Wednesday night by Willie McAuliffe (Chair of the Festival Organising Committee) after a 14 hour journey.