The Circular EELISA Community aims to promote the development of a mindset that favors a transition to the circular economy by addressing the socio-civic competencies of future professionals. The project worked towards the community’s abovementioned goal by enhancing awareness and knowledge of the circular economy and the accompanying socio-civic competencies across and beyond Europe, increasing knowledge and engagement about the EELISA Alliance and disseminating the participating students’ productions, all of which were among the expected impacts of the project setup. This study analyzes CIRCULAR IN PLAY in terms of its international and interdisciplinary collaboration scheme, project process design, recognitions, and impacts. It also investigates the extent to which the project achieved its expected impacts and makes recommendations based on the results of the activities to enhance the success of EELISA and its communities. CIRCULAR IN PLAY was a series of three online game nights and subsequent design activities associated with upcoming international events commemorating innovation and environment. The first workshop, 3VIA 2022, which was held on September 30th as part of the European Researchers’ Night 2022 of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions, involved a trivia quiz event on the three main themes of the circular economy: reduce, reuse, and recycle. The second workshop, Scape Room, was held as part of the Madrid Science and Innovation Week 2022 on November 18th and designed as a scientific parkour centered around the circular economy and its associated socio-civic skills. The third workshop, R-Express, was held on March 13th in the same week as Global Recycling Day 2023 and also as part of the ATHENS Network course UPM127 on the basics of the circular economy in the construction sector. In all the events’ two-hour activities, a game-based learning setting enabled participants from different backgrounds and locations in Europe to actively partake in fun, dynamic challenges designed to pique their curiosity and interest in the proposed topics. This study elaborates on this critical approach and discusses the causal relationships between different states of impact satisfaction, keeping in mind constraints on the ability to measure impact and the relatively short time since the project’s completion. Also discussed are some rather embedded impacts that were not mentioned in the proposal, such as increased engagement among the community member universities and researchers and increased capacities of both researchers and students organizing and attending the activities. The study discusses the findings of such assessments in terms of outreach strategies, stakeholder engagement, data collection and management, capacity building, and participant and organizer recognitions. The findings are accompanied by a set of action-oriented recommendations to further elevate the highly promising and inspiring framework of the EELISA European University Alliance.

AUTHORS: Imge Akcakaya Waite, Justo García Navarro, Anabel Castillo Rodríguez, Lăcrămioara Diana Robescu. Diana Cocârţă ,Irina Istrate, Francesca Cecchi, Metin Berk Süer