Five years ago, the universities of Oldenburg and Groningen renewed their 40-year strategic partnership and adopted the ‘Roadmap’. At the halfway point, the two presidencies have now drawn a positive balance: numerous joint workshops, teaching events, exchange activities and network meetings have taken place in the seven focus areas of the strategy paper - healthy ageing, linguistics, energy research, law, digitalisation, teacher training and knowledge transfer. A total of 36 bilateral projects were set up between 2021 and 2025. The two universities are also cooperating in eight other third-party funded projects, particularly within the EU INTERREG programme. 24 binational doctoral programmes are currently underway, seven have already been completed. The collaboration has resulted in more than 200 scientific publications with authors from both universities, the majority of which are in the field of medicine. Knowledge and technology transfer is centred around the border region around Papenburg. In a joint pilot project, the two universities have been working closely with the regional economy, politics and society since 2022 to strengthen research and development in the border region. In addition, events were held in Papenburg at which scientists from Oldenburg and Groningen presented their research to the public.

Over the next five years, new networks will bring researchers from both universities even closer together - be it through conferences, mutual faculty visits or online events. This will be made possible by the University of Oldenburg's ‘Programme for Excellence’ project, which is supported by the state of Lower Saxony in the ‘Strategically developing potential’ funding line and provides for several measures that directly affect the partnership between the universities. Among other things, around 15 researchers per year will be able to conduct research at the respective partner university for up to four months in future. A further programme will enable one doctoral student per year and faculty to complete a doctorate at both universities in parallel. Similar to a comparable institution in Groningen, the ‘Oldenburg Young Academy’ is to be established to promote talented academics at an early career stage and international academic exchange. The University of Oldenburg is also planning a conference for student research to which it would like to invite Dutch students to Oldenburg.