Professor Michael Osborne, Director of PASCAL in Europe was very pleased to be invited by Seoul National University for a week of activities in Seoul, beginning 14 October 2019.

Roof gardens atop the Seoul National University College of Education

On Tuesday 15 October at Chung-Ang University, Professor Osborne addressed of group of some 100 learning city practitioners, including city mayors and graduate students on the theme, “Learning cities in a global context”, deriving his presentation from a Briefing Paper that was commissioned by the UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning for its recent 4^th Global conference on learning cities.  

The event was co-hosted by the Korean Association of Lifelong Learning Cities, whose chair the Mayor of Seodaemun-Gu, Mr Seok Jin Mun, together with Professor Heesu Lee of Chung-Ang University made introductory remarks.

On Wednesday 16 October he addressed an Expert Meeting at Korean National Institute of Lifelong Education (NILE) (a closed meeting with 15 invited discussants) under the theme of the “SDGs and Lifelong Learning”, drawing in particular on the work of the GCRF ESRC-funded Centre for Sustainable Healthy Learning Cities and Neighbourhoods.

On Friday 18 October, Professor Osborne was a keynote speaker at the 20th International Conference on Research in Education organised by the Department of Education, Education Research Institute, Seoul National University with over 500 delegates. The conference was co-hosted by the Korean Ministry of Education, the Korean Educational Development Service (KEDI), the Korean Educational Research Association and the Korea Institute for Educational Evaluation.

His keynote "A New Imperative: Regions and Higher Education in Difficult Times" was drawn from the book of the same name co-authored with Chris Duke and Bruce Wilson.

He provided an overview of the work of PASCAL in the field of university engagement with cities and regions, including the work of PURE and the more recent SUEUAA project funded by the British Academy under GCRF.

Other keynotes included the former Deputy Prime Minister (and former Minister of Education) of Korea, Professor Kim Shinil.