Empowered collaboration across/beyond the university: Co-creative and co-desire of higher education futures

To thrive and remain a creative and imaginative force in culture and society, universities must engage in increasingly complex, collaborative, and co-creative knowledge partnerships. However, to survive, it must do so while upholding its values, purpose, and institutional integrity. The challenge lies in defining and reconfiguring its boundaries to enable creative and empowering engagements while preserving academic autonomy (Cohen, 2021). As higher education evolves within the university through new collaborations and models, urgent inquiry is needed into the applications, implications, and contingencies of emerging approaches that redefine the university and its potential roles in culture and society (Barnett, 2024; Barnett et al., 2022; Temple, 2025; Nørgård, 2022; Nørgård & Bengtsen, 2018; Staley, 2019). This encompasses newer co-creative theories such as quadruple helix ecosystems, living labs, citizen science, mode three knowledge creation, and transformative partnerships, which reshape the university's role in society (Carayannis et al., 2018, 2022; Carayannis & Morawska-Jancelewicz 2022; Nørgård & Holflod, 2024a, 2024b; Nørgård et al., 2019).
At the heart of this transformative shift lies empowerment, a contested concept within collaborative discourse, often oscillating between process and outcome. Kesby (2005) contends that empowerment cannot be externally bestowed; it must emerge from collective practices that challenge entrenched hierarchies. In line with this, Pettit (2012) emphasises that authentic empowerment entails profound shifts in power relations, transcending immediate economic or utilitarian outcomes. Hardina (2003) reinforces that true empowerment fosters transformative change at individual, organisational, and societal levels. From a philosophical standpoint, Randrup et al. (2016) argue that collaboration extends beyond mere cooperation or working together to include epistemological commitments to shared knowledge, metaphysical inquiries into the creation of collective reality, and axiological considerations of values and ethics. Kamruzzaman (2020) supports this perspective, asserting that participation must evolve into co-creative practices that cultivate critical awareness, diversity, and inclusion.
This paper conceptualises empowered collaboration as a mode of deliberate and committed engagement that not only enhances participation but actively redefines the nature of collaboration and redistributes power within structures of collaborative empowerment. Drawing from a three-year Horizon Europe project in the arts, humanities, and cultural heritage, this paper illustrates and discusses how empowered collaboration and co-creative participation represent an iterative process of rethinking and reconfiguring power relations and modes of participation within and beyond academic institutions. Drawing from Sol (2019), which demonstrates how cultural participation can amplify marginalised voices, and Morgan (2016), who critiques depoliticised empowerment efforts, we argue that universities gain from nurturing participatory co-creative spaces. In these spaces, students, educators, researchers, and external partners challenge dominant narratives, co-define and co-desire the terms of engagement, and co-shape institutional practices, thereby transforming universities into hubs of epistemic and practical engagement that emphasises the ethos that the world is made; therefore, it could be made differently (DiSalvo, 2022). In conclusion, this paper presents and positions empowered collaboration as a concept and practice to theorise, enact, reposition, and reimagine collaborations within and beyond the university critically and creatively with diverse participants.

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