This article explores which measures are perceived by European key stakeholders (students, employers and academics) as crucial for the development of curricula that provide graduates with working-life competences and key skills that may increase their employability. It also seeks to identify measures that may strengthen cooperation between companies and universities. This was achieved through the application of 1734 questionnaires to key stakeholders in five European countries which are part of the European project #Europehome. The most popular measure identified by all stakeholders was the internship. More specifically, internships are considered of great importance to increase graduates’ employability as well as being the best means of cooperation between universities and companies. In addition, the study identified a range of best practices and measures that may help lay the foundations and sustain the development of well-planned curricula.

This paper discusses the importance of co-created visual narratives in developing participatory and inclusive place branding. We refer to the need for a socially responsible approach when considering place branding policies and practices. For this purpose, we develop and empirically apply a novel framework with four interconnected phases comprising place-based contextualization, re-appreciation, re-positioning, and consolidation of residents' perceptions, experiences and aspirations to develop and initiate inclusive place branding processes. Using participatory research and collaborative visual methods, we worked with a group of residents in Carvalhal de Vermilhas, Portugal. This work stimulated the co-development of collective agency to consider narratives, values and identities to be articulated for creating and promoting more inclusive representation of place in a (hypothetical) branding exercise. The framework application as well as its challenges and limitations, particularly in co-creation processes, were critically deliberated at all phases. Collaborative visual techniques from our analysis emerge as valuable participatory tools for researchers towards improving residents' participation in place branding, and therefore contributing towards a more inclusive form of this practice. However, we are also aware of the perils associated with communities' opening up their pristine heritage to touristic ventures, and hence suggest considering the importance of sustainable place-shaping in all branding decisions.

This paper discusses the transformative role of people and the places which they inhabit. It advocates the richness and multiplicity of actors and understandings to drive sustainable place-shaping practices. Grounded in the interdisciplinary placebased conceptualisation of social innovation, the paper aims to progress a holistic conceptual framework which integrates the active processes of learning, experiencing, and regeneration to tackle the complex challenges of sustainability. The discussion argues for moving beyond the conceptual deliberations into practice-based research. The framework proposed brings together three different lenses: first, transformative learning as an approach to experiential pedagogy with focus on education and learning based in local communities and the surrounding places; second, experiencing place through sense-making to help people relate closely to their values and meanings of place; third, regenerative action to reverse and recuperate from the negative impact of humans on the environment and promote place stewardship. Through a dynamic combination of these processes, new socially innovative agency is created. Empirical examples of this agency have been captured in this paper from a series of projects which were part of the SUSPLACE programme. In conclusion, we associate the interactive nature of this agency with sustainable re-learning, re-experiencing, and re-generation processes to reshape places in a transformative way.

Purpose In the last decade, graduates’ employability has assumed a central role in scholars’ concerns. This was mainly due the high rate of recent graduates’ unemployment in some European countries, as well as the Bologna Process reform of the European higher education system and the new Europe Strategy 2020. The purpose of this paper, driven by the increasing need to improve graduates’ skills and employability, is to identify a set of skills that students consider important to achieve success in their own field of study and another set of skills, which they perceive to lack the most. Design/methodology/approach To achieve the main goal of this study, based on the methodology supported by literature review, a questionnaire was applied to students from five different European universities. Findings The main results allowed the authors to infer that, on the one hand, the European students of the universities included in the study consider communication, thinking and interpersonal skills as the most important skills to get a job in their own field of study; and on the other hand, personal, interpersonal and entrepreneurial skills are the skills lacked by students. These set of skills are quite similar and even overlapping, which makes this a significant inference that needs to be accounted by higher education institutions (HEIs). Originality/value In the research carried out in this study, with the students of five different European universities affected by the economic crisis of 2007/2008, the needed skills perceived by students to obtain employment in their own field of study were identified, along with the skills which they perceived to lack the most. The obtained findings contribute to shed light on the important issue of supporting HEIs regarding the skills that should be imparted in the curricula of their courses and workshops, in order to help the students to succeed in the current and potential competitive labour market.