This panel discusses the book titled "The Territorial Dimension of EU Knowledge Policies: Higher Education Institutions for Europe" by Alina J. Felder-Stindt. The book is forthcoming (June 2025) under the Routldege/UACES Contemporary European Studies Series. While the panel chair is confirmed, the panel discussants are still pending. The potential discussants include: Simona Piattoni, Lee Rensimer, Katja Sarmiento-Mirwaldt and Olga Litvyak.

The European Union aims to strengthen economic competitiveness through policies that foster the knowledge economy. These include areas without supranational competence such as higher education (HE). EU regional policy as well ought to strengthen the knowledge economy by distributing structural funding, which amounts to one third and thus a substantial part of the EU budget. Contrary to supranational and sectorial foci of previous research, this book provides a territorial perspective on EU knowledge policies and crosses policy area boundaries. It examines how EU regional policy, endowed with substantial financial resources, influences the comparatively weakly endowed EU HE policy. A theoretical model is developed that combines regionalization typologies with structural, relational, and cognitive Europeanization mechanisms. Empirically, the book compares border region networks among HE institutions that finance their activities through Interreg as the EU regional policy instrument for cross-border cooperation.

The book shows that HE regionalization endeavours are political projects of regional and EU decision-makers, which remain exposed to Europeanization processes in the long term. The analysis not only uncovers adjustment processes at regional level, but also that actors who have benefitted from Interreg strive to influence the EU’s knowledge policies. As a consequence of successfully expanding its influence over HE institution cooperation, the EU contributes to the creation of regional HE and research spaces and the roles of HE institutions in different EU policies are becoming more differentiated. Changes in (sub)national HE policies are as well more likely because cooperating HE institutions encounter barriers posed by different HE systems when implementing EU policies and funding.

Overall, this book expands our understanding of the so-far overlooked territorial dimension of the EU’s knowledge policies crossing policy area boundaries. By showing that (sub)national actors not only implement EU regional policy instruments, but also actively shape EU policies the book provides new insights into the (feedback) effects of EU-funded cross-border cooperation. This book is of key interest to scholars and students of European policymaking, EU integration, EU regional policies, EU public policy courses and more broadly to geography/development, social policy, governance and education policies.