HOCHSCHULE FUR ANGEWANDTE WISSENSCHAFTEN COBURG

Their core work

Hochschule Coburg is a German University of Applied Sciences with demonstrated expertise in research integrity education and digital trust infrastructure. In their EU project work, they have contributed to designing and running training programs that teach researchers how to recognize and avoid misconduct, using pedagogical methods such as role-playing scenarios and exposure to ethical role models. They also participated in FutureTrust, a project developing interoperable electronic signature and identity verification services for cross-border digital transactions. Their applied-sciences mandate means they bridge academic research with practical, implementable solutions rather than pursuing purely theoretical outputs.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In their first H2020 engagement (2016–2019), Hochschule Coburg played a supporting partner role in FutureTrust, contributing to digital trust and e-identity infrastructure — a highly technical, engineering-adjacent domain. Their second project (2019–2022) marks a clear pivot: they stepped up as coordinator and shifted focus entirely to research culture and ethics education, with explicit attention to learning methodology. The trajectory suggests a move away from digital infrastructure toward institutional capacity-building and researcher training, which may better reflect their core applied-sciences teaching identity.

Hochschule Coburg appears to be positioning itself as a competence center for research ethics and integrity training, a growing policy priority in European research funding — making them a plausible partner for future projects on responsible research and innovation or open science culture.

How they like to work

Hochschule Coburg has shown willingness to both lead and follow: they joined as a participant in a large, technically complex project, then took the coordinator seat in a softer, education-focused initiative. With 30 unique partners across 14 countries from just two projects, they appear to work in medium-to-large consortia with broad geographic diversity rather than returning repeatedly to the same partners. This suggests they are comfortable navigating multi-partner coordination and bring a generalist consortium management capacity alongside their thematic expertise.

Despite only two H2020 projects, Hochschule Coburg has built a notably wide network of 30 unique partners spanning 14 countries — an unusually high partner-to-project ratio that reflects participation in large, multi-stakeholder consortia. Their collaborative reach is clearly European in scope.

What sets them apart

Hochschule Coburg occupies a niche as a teaching-focused applied university that has translated its pedagogical expertise into a funded EU research coordination role — specifically in the under-served area of research integrity training. Unlike large research universities, they bring an education-design perspective grounded in applied practice rather than theoretical output. For consortia targeting Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI), Open Science culture, or researcher training objectives, they offer credibility as both practitioner and coordinator.

Highlights from their portfolio

• Path2Integrity
  Their largest project and only coordination role, it introduced role-playing and role-model methods to research ethics training — an applied pedagogical approach uncommon in the compliance-heavy research integrity field.
• FutureTrust
  Participation in this digital trust infrastructure project demonstrates an earlier cross-disciplinary reach into e-identity and secure digital transactions, showing range beyond their current education focus.