About the project
Higher Education in the Age of AI
A four-year MSCA Staff Exchange across 10 institutions on 4 continents.
Artificial intelligence is reshaping how universities teach, how students learn, and how knowledge is produced and shared.
Generative AI assistants, automated assessment tools and adaptive learning platforms have moved from experimental projects to everyday classroom presence within just a few academic years. The pace of adoption has outrun our collective understanding of what AI does to the pedagogical relationship, the cognitive development of learners, and the ethical foundations of academic work.
HUMAN-AI is a four-year international research and staff-exchange programme that takes this challenge head-on. The consortium asks one guiding question:
"How can higher education preserve its human dimension — critical thinking, dialogue, mentorship, creativity, ethical agency — while making the most of what artificial intelligence has to offer?"
We approach this question not as critics of technology, but as educators and researchers who believe that human-centred AI
integration is both possible and urgent. The project builds methodologies, evidence, and practical frameworks that allow universities, teachers and students to work with AI without losing
the essence of higher learning.
What we do
Three intertwined tracks
Joint research, international staff exchanges, and open knowledge transfer.
Joint research
Comparative studies, surveys, focus groups and bibliometric analyses across 9 countries - examining how students, academic staff and institutions experience and govern AI in higher education
International staff exchange
Researchers, educators and PhD candidates spend secondments at partner institutions across Europe, Asia and Latin America — producing shared methodologies and joint publications.
Knowledge transfer
Workshops, summer schools, open educational resources, policy briefs and peer-reviewed publications, designed to be reusable by universities, ministries and ed-tech practitioners worldwide.
Geography
Why a global consortium
AI affects education differently across cultures, languages, and education systems. A research consortium limited to Europe would miss the perspectives that are reshaping the field most rapidly: the rise of national LLMs in Asia, the equity-focused digital education models of Latin America, the inclusive education priorities of Central Asia, and the cross-border AI governance debates in the EU.
HUMAN-AI brings together ten institutions across nine countries — a geographic, linguistic, and disciplinary spread that is rare even among Horizon Europe consortia. Each partner contributes distinct expertise and hosts incoming colleagues, ensuring that ideas, methods and evidence circulate rather than concentrate.
Funding
Horizon Europe — MSCA Staff Exchanges
HUMAN-AI is funded by the European Union under the Horizon Europe programme, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions — Staff Exchanges
(HORIZON-MSCA-2025-SE-01).
Smyrnova-Trybulska, Prof. US
(2026–2030)