The conference was organized by the European Association for International Education (EAIE). With over 6.300 participants from over 90 countries the conference took place from September 13th to 16th 2022 at a large conference venue in Barcelona. The organizers of the conference also put great effort into being as sustainable as possible by honoring people traveling green (by bus, ship or bike), serving only vegetarian food throughout the whole conference and trying to avoid as much waste as possible (especially unnecessary paper brochures).

During the conference university representatives, professors, staff members of international offices and all kind of stakeholders involved in the international education business gathered to exchange ideas as well as discuss challenges the pandemic and other external impacts brought to the education sector. For us it was a pleasure to represent the Harz UAS by meeting representatives from partner universities from all over the world.

We had meetings mainly with our European partners, for instance, from France, Finland and Switzerland, but also with partners from South Africa and New Zealand. We were able to talk about our cooperations, ways to work successfully together in the future and about overall impressions students have during their semester abroad.

Also, the concept of blended and short term mobilities - for instance summer and winter schools as well as staff weeks - was discussed which seems to hold opportunities many students and staff members are interested in.

Besides catching up with existing partners there was also time to establish new contacts. While walking around the different booths at the large exhibition hall we were able to get an impression of other universities and their campus and study programs. In addition to the exhibition hall a large variety of workshop sessions were conducted in which participants talked about different aspects of internationalization in education, for instance, internationalization at home, sustainable development, digitalization and stakeholder engagement. Next to the workshop sessions there was also an opening reception on the first evening where we were able to enjoy Spanish music and tapas and chat with different people more informally in a relaxing atmosphere.