Future generations face unprecedented challenges; climate change, resource depletion, socio-economic and health inequalities. Systemic structural transitions are urgently needed. We are the Centre for Unusual Collaborations, part of the alliance between four leading Dutch universities: Utrecht University, University Medical Center Utrecht, Technical University Eindhoven, and Wageningen University and Research. Early and mid-career academics of these institutes are committed to finding ways to address pressing societal challenges and produce sustainable transitions towards a better future. We do this by stimulating collaborations across fields and disciplines, across institutes, and with partners from outside academia. Collaborations that go beyond the interdisciplinary research that exists already. And between young researchers who would, under ordinary circumstances, not team up. CUCo’s mission is to foster new, unexpected, and unexplored collaborations based on co-design and co-creation of research projects. We provide a space, both physical and intellectual, where such collaborations can take place. We facilitate thinking, learning and research that is: • collaborative and interdisciplinary • innovative and exploratory • unexpected, surprising, and adventurous. We do this by offering support through training, inspirational events, research grants, a range of tools, methods and approaches. CUCo wants to provoke debate on what it means to think outside the box. We want to showcase unusual modes of thinking and doing research. Our physical space, the CUCo’s Nest, provides a venue for workshops, trainings, network events and collaboration.” In addition to providing a space for unusual collaborations, CUCo also provides financial support for outside the box projects that are embedded in the CUCo learning journey.
