New contacts in Europe via conference on playful pedagogy
Jonathan Schalk talks about a much-appreciated conference of the ENLIGHT network on the theme of playfulness in higher education. Photo: Mikael Wallerstedt, Uppsala University.
In October 2025, Uppsala University arranged a conference on playfulness in higher education. The conference was held within the ENLIGHT network and was very positively received.
Jonathan Schalk, you were involved in arranging the conference in the ENLIGHT network. The theme was playfulness in higher education. Why did you choose that theme?
“Inspiring playful learning promotes the individual’s innate desire to learn by, for example, discovering, exploring and collaborating. The theme was tested at a previous national teaching and learning conference here in Uppsala and was greatly appreciated.
“There is also great variety in the theme of playfulness, which invites lecturers to think creatively even in how they choose to present the contributions. Many of the presenters took the opportunity to act out their vision for teaching and learning, and the participants were keen to join in.”
Can you tell us about some of the points on the conference programme?
“As organisers, we participated in the theme by organising playful activities and inviting inspiring speakers. The conference programme included a guided tour of Uppsala channelling Gustav Vasa and Erik XIV, a board games night at the Centre for Environment and Development Studies, and a tour of the new Uppsala Castle Museum.”
How were the theme and conference received by the participants? Before the conference, your hopes included new collaborations in Europe to develop new tools.
“It’s a bit shameless to praise your own conference, so I’d rather just lean on the evaluation, which was very positive. 92% said they had made meaningful, new connections. I hope, of course, that we will see the marks of playfulness in ENLIGHT’s upcoming call for proposals for educational development grants during spring 2026.”
What’s happening in ENLIGHT in the near future?
“The vision is that every other student should have international experience in their degree. As a step in this development, ENLIGHT has now established a framework for various forms of international activities that can be used in study programmes. All partner universities in ENLIGHT are working to evaluate their internal support systems for international mobility. The aim is to be able to scale up their capacity to offer international mobility opportunities to more students.
“In parallel with this, we will continue to offer activities for networking, collaboration and the development of projects in education, third-stream activities, and to some extent also research. In addition to the call for proposals for educational development grants, during the spring a number of ENLIGHT Staff Weeks and events in collaboration with external partners will be held.
“The next Teaching and Learning Conference will open for applications for conference contributions shortly after the New year. The conference will take place in Bern, Switzerland, 22–24 October 2026. Uppsala University is expected to be able to send around 20 participants.”
Anders Berndt
The ENLIGHT network
- ENLIGHT stands for European University Network to Promote Quality of Life, Sustainability and Global Engagement Through Higher Education Transformation.
- ENLIGHT is a European education network operated as an EU project.
- ENLIGHT started in 2020 as a network of nine European universities that were named ‘the European universities’. Uppsala University is one of those universities.
- Today, ten research-intensive universities from as many European countries are part of ENLIGHT. Universities that train more than 300,000 students each year.
- The purpose of ENLIGHT is to increase mobility between higher education institutions through new joint education initiatives. ENLIGHT aims to promote equality, improved quality of life, sustainability and global engagement through higher education.
- The ENLIGHT Teaching and Learning Conference is held every year. In October 2025, it was held in Uppsala.