Driving professional excellence
HUMANE, the Heads of University Management & Administration Network in Europe, is primarily a European association whose aims are to build global networks of professionals, to foster innovation in higher education services and to drive professional excellence in higher education management. The network welcomes universities from outside Europe to broaden contributions.
The network aims to transform higher education into a dynamic sector open to the world, through the transformation of professional services with contemporary approaches for dynamic service delivery and what is needed in the academic enterprise of today. HUMANE helps universities thrive in the global world by empowering their senior professional service leaders and managers to strengthen professional practices and organisational development.
Our strategy is centred around connecting, developing, and empowering professionals in higher education, be it those in senior generalist positions (Head/Director of Administration, Registrar, Secretary-General, Chancellor, or Chief Operating Officer) or in more specialised ones (HR, finances, IT, estates, internationalisation, quality assurance, knowledge transfer and innovation).
To do so we offer a wide portfolio of professional development programmes and networking events that focus on contemporary trends in higher education and ways to address the challenges leaders and managers currently experience. We help leaders and managers of professional services find new solutions and deliver effectively for the university of the future by building capabilities in their institutions.
Membership of HUMANE provides a cost-effective means to:
- expand professional networks both locally and internationally,
- develop the skills and expertise that you need to succeed,
- stay up-to-date on key issues and trends,
- have the opportunity to work with HE leaders who have first-hand experience of the ever-changing challenges within HE.
For further information go to the Join HUMANE page, see our page “benefits of membership” and read our “vision, mission and strategy” page. you can also contact us via email. The current HUMANE Newsletter (Autumn 2024) can be downloaded: here
HUMANE Winter School, Barcelona
Leading change in strategy and policy – Internationalisation
March 23-28, 2025
Hosted by the UPF Universitat Pompeu Fabra Barcelona (ES)
The HUMANE Winter School aims to develop the leadership potential of talented Senior Managers by making them fully aware of:
- The concepts and practices of strategic management in a European context;
- The importance of integrating academic matters, finances, human resources, governance, leadership and communication strategy in the elaboration of university strategy.
The Winter School focuses on leadership skills and the “big picture” of management (how to identify and implement necessary changes). Throughout the week participants work on a case resolution on the internationalisation strategy of a University. The context of university life and the developing scene across Europe provide a unifying thread – this is not just “yet another” management course.
The Winter School is designed for talented fast-rising managers of administration or services, some of who might become heads of administration. The typical candidate will be someone who has the potential to become an influential senior manager and/or head of administration in the future but who at this moment may not be a deputy or senior colleague. Candidates may be an expert or a specialist with the potential to broaden responsibility and move in due course to a senior management position. Applicants are nominated by their own head of administration, their dean or equivalent in their organisation. They are selected by a HUMANE panel with extensive experience of leadership management development programmes.
For late applications contact the Secretariat.
Residential School Alumni Webinar
Remodelling professional services in universities in the digital age
Thursday, 6 February 2025, 12:00 – 13:15 CET
For Residential School Alumni only
The first of three events on the topic Remodelling professional services in universities in the digital age will focus on how universities can enhance their communication in the digital age, making effective use of new technologies and working with Artificial Intelligence.
How does this influence universities’ strategic positions and the dynamics of university leadership? What are the implications for the delivery of professional services? How can we develop a new approach to knowledge exchange and upskilling our staff to work with technology and Artificial Intelligence in the digital Age?
The other events in this series will take place at the HUMANE Annual Conference, in the Residential School Alumni session and a final webinar on November 27.
We will among others discuss the following issues:
- Interacting with internal stakeholders, systematically and structurally
- Interacting with the outside world and external stakeholders
- Building internal capacity and highly specialised expertise
- Staff upskilling to communicate in the digital Age
This event is strictly for HUMANE Residential School Alumni.
The programme and speakers will be available soon here; you can already register here.
HUMANE Study Visit Europe
The Paris-Saclay Initiative: Vision, Strategy and Achievements
April 9-11, 2025
Hosted by Paris-Saclay University (FR)
The Paris-Saclay University was established in 2015 by the French government to develop a high-level research-focused university that could reach the top-ten position in the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) and be a top university in continental Europe.
To reach a critical size the University brings together four leading technical French Grandes Ecoles with two universities, in a partnership with six national research organisations in a research-intensive academic campus 20 kms south of Paris.
The University has some 48 000 students, 8 000 researchers and academic staff, 8 500 technical and administrative staff; it has over 275 laboratories, 11 fields medallists and 4 Nobel Prize winners. It describes itself as “the beating heart for entrepreneurship and innovation”, a powerful research ecosystem in a dynamic business cluster of high technology companies.
Paris-Saclay is at a turning point of its brief history; participants in the Study Visit will exchange with senior university leaders and professional service leaders:
- The original ambition, vision and strategy and the achievements to date
- The governance model
- Implications for resources and economies of scale: sharing services and infrastructure
- Financial strategies and funding
- Collaborative relationships with industry on the Saclay plateau
- The organisational cultural transformation now taking place (as the end of the experimental phase is approaching in 2028)
Save the date and register here to secure your place.
HUMANE Annual Conference
Performance Unleashed: Co-creating High Value for Stakeholders
June 4-6, 2025
Hosted in Helsinki jointly by Aalto University, the University of Helsinki and the University of the Arts Helsinki (FI)
The 2025 HUMANE Annual Conference will explore strategies and practices to enhance institutional performance through close engagement with internal and external stakeholders. In today’s rapidly evolving landscape, higher education institutions are facing many challenges to balance the needs of students, faculty, staff, their communities and funders. The conference will bring together thought leaders, practitioners, and innovators to share insights and actionable solutions aimed at fostering collaboration and driving excellence in higher education.
The three HUMANE member universities of Helsinki (Aalto University, the University of Helsinki and the University of the Arts Helsinki) will be our hosts. As a bursting place for innovation, the smart city of Helsinki is the ideal place to address our conference theme. Finland ranks seventh in the world for its innovation capabilities, thanks to its unique approach to entrepreneurship. It is also the world’s most sustainable destination. It is leading in technology developments, seen as critical to support current challenges: the environmental crisis, the development of well-being due to an aging population (and increasing problems of mental health), the erosion of democracy, increasing competition and the challenges to current economic foundations. Finnish universities play a key role in these developments.
Save the date and register here to secure your place.
HUMANE Study Visit Southeast Asia
Driving Success: Strategic Innovation through transformative leadership in Southeast Asian Universities
November 9-14, 2025
Hosted by The University of Nottingham Malaysia; The St.Gallen Institute of Management in Asia (SGI) in Singapore
The HUMANE Study Visit is a unique opportunity for senior university leaders and managers to understand what makes Southeast Asia a strong powerhouse of innovation and economic success, and how universities in the region are playing a key role in driving this success.
ASEAN is the world’s fifth-largest economy only just behind the US, China, Japan, and Germany. With a growing population of close to 700 million inhabitants there is strong appetite for higher education and a growing research production with leading areas of research excellence. Malaysia and Singapore are transforming their higher education system, building significant capacity for higher education and research excellence, and by doing so contributing to major societal and economic growth.
Our main hosts will be The University of Nottingham Malaysia (UNM) in Kuala Lumpur and the Swiss St. Gallen Institute of Management in Asia (SGI) in Singapore. There will be visits to several universities such as the National University of Singapore (NUS), the Nanyang Technological University Singapore (NTU) and the Singapore Management University (SMU).
The Study Visit will among others focus on the following themes:
- Transformative university leadership to support economic and societal growth
- Strategic positioning in the region
- Support to the national talent strategies: skilling, upskilling and reskilling for the labour market
- Delivering research and innovation for economic and societal growth
- Delivering transnational education for capacity building, innovation and economic growth
- Sustaining global and local partnerships
Participants will have the opportunity to engage in high level conversations with those who are leading large scale educational developments, seeing first-hand what it means in practice and getting a sense of the university life, innovative teaching approaches, student engagement and the local startup ecosystem.
The programme outline will be available soon here. In the meantime save the dates and register here.
HUMANE Summer School, Berlin
Change Management and Transformation in Universities
September 14-19, 2025
Hosted by the Freie Universität Berlin (DE)
The Summer School focuses on achieving sustainable change in relation to universities’ operations. Participants use professional services transformation programme case studies and other material to explore global best practice in this area.
The programme content focuses on the wide variety of contrasting approaches to meeting the challenge of effecting policy and strategy change. Topics such as globalisation, strategic change management, strategic financial management, human resource management and strategic communication are covered over the course of the week.
We are looking for applications from fast rising middle to senior managers, keen to learn more about the art and science of leading and managing large-scale changes in operations and support services. Applicants must be open to non-hierarchical, flexible, agile management approaches, including approaches deployed in other industry sectors. Typically, they will be able to demonstrate the potential to move beyond their current roles irrespective of whether they are already working in operations management, or come from a specialist technical, or policy background. Applicants are nominated by their own head of administration, their dean or equivalent in their organisation. They are selected by a HUMANE panel with extensive experience of leadership management development programmes.
Sign up here to be kept informed about the 2025 edition of the Summer School.
University governance, leadership and management in higher education
Major transformations have occurred in the governance of public higher education institutions in the last decades. Universities often have been granted more autonomy from state control to set their own strategic agendas, decide on their governance and manage their own affairs. Yet at the same time new forms of quality control and performance contracts have emerged under which the state is demanding accountability from its universities.
HUMANE carried out a Survey to gain a better understanding of the profound changes in the position of Head of Administration, understood as a generic term to refer to directors of administration, general directors of services (as in France), registrars or clerks (as in the UK), vice-presidents for administrative affairs, kanzlers (as in Germany).