INTRODUCTION

This volume deals with two key themes for university development in the face of contemporary challenges: the digital transition that affects a university, like any other organisation, and the governance of the HE within multidimensional, multilevel and variable geometries. The Covid-19 period represented a radical watershed highlighting a dramatic delay of countries, education policies and universities in dealing with the digital issue. The Bologna Process (1999) was animated by a transformation project based on two axes: creating a common space by promoting a shared cultural framework and activating local actors appointed to guide the change. In that perspective, Information Computer Technologies (ICTs) were considered transmission technologies for inclusion and lifelong learning. This slow process of building a European alliance, which has lasted over twenty years, gives universities growing responsibilities within society and the knowledge economy in Europe. At this juncture, they face a range of radical transformations. They are under pressure from regulatory interventions carried out at the national level, have to adapt the legislative framework to the commitments undertaken at the supranational level, take account of the sudden change in the labour market and professions, increase global competitiveness to achieve better performance in national and international ranking, respond to the pressure to boost research productivity and social impacts, and appreciate the anthropological and invisible change in their students, who are increasingly becoming “digital natives”. This volume summarises the main results of a three-year research work conducted within the framework of an international project, which saw the collaboration of six universities interested in becoming protagonists and cognizant actors of change in the face of the challenges of our times. Through a comparative, theoretical and empirical perspective, the research results summarised in this volume explore the complex governance strategies activated at systemic and European levels to identify those drivers of change that mark the transition phases, reconstruction stages, meanings and tools that guide choices and inter-institutional relations. It reconstructs the organisational complexity of the university, the centrality of its public function and the need to define new governance, leadership and action models in the framework of the triple transition in which the human family is involved: digital, ecological and social.