Prof. Dr. Vilmante Kumpikaite-Valiuniene 2016 (Kaunas University of Technology)

Our Faculty of Business and Social Sciences was delighted to welcome Prof. Dr. Vilmantė Kumpikaitė-Valiūnienė for an intensive weekend seminar in European Studies. She had already joined us for weekend seminars in Managing Cultural Diversity in 2009 and 2010 and for our International Week in 2015 - so she was perfectly familiar with our university campus!

Her research topics include the reasons and motives of international migration, self-initiated expatriates, spirituality, spiritual and moral values at work, human resource development and its evaluation, modern teaching and learning methods.

The intensive seminar in European Studies was a special academic experience as it united students from seven different nationalities and four continents: Europea, Asia, Africa, and South America - which provided a truly stimulating environment for discussion on very current topics. The main focus was on demographic change and migration in the EU countries and its impact on the labour market.

Participants were very surprised about the extent to which demographic change has occurred in EU member states - some of them had not been aware of these changes before. Many of the research actvities had a very practical focus and invited students to compare the situations in different EU member countries. This way, the students communicated a lot and shared their insights with the rest of their teams.