Interventions

Higher Education (HE) institutions – fundamental agents empowering new generations to meet the complexities of the modern world – have been undergoing significant transformations recently. Th e de velopment of the European Education Area in the HE sector, strengthening international cooperation and collaboration by the creation of transnational alliances of HE institutions, have resulted in the constantly increasing international and foreign exchange student populations in HE. Qualitative synergies of education, research and innovation have developed, and tertiary education landscapes have profoundly changed. Although the programmes offered to international and foreign exchange students through English as the medium of instruction (EMI) have been one of the solutions for meeting the new societal demands, this phenomenon has also brought a number of challenges, one of them related to social justice (see Sahan et al. 2021). Therefore, plurilingual competence has been now “at the heart of the vision of a European Education Area” (see Council of Europe 2019: 1) and plurilingual education has been recognised as beneficial in improving inclusion in education by academic research (Piccardo et al. 2022; Galante 2022). HE institutions embracing plurilingual approaches must create a new multilingual and multicultural university ethos as a prerequisite for the EU’s diversity and inclusion policies. Such changes demand for new competences of HE staff to enable these transformations and ensure quality education and training for all.