Already many years ago, when I started my work at the Radboud University, I became aware, that from 
the position of the smallest Geography Department in the Netherlands, in the field of such a broad discipline as Geography, we cannot just rely on our own forces, but in addition, we need to set up strategic alliances with other departments at other universities and with other disciplines at our own university. And so I did and explored many options within the Netherlands but also abroad, resulting in several and partly also changing strategic alliances with other universities, such as Political Geography at the University of Amsterdam (UvA), and Geography at the University of Groningen (RUG), and currently Cultural Geography at the Wageningen University and Research (WUR) and Geography at the University of Zurich (UZH). A further cooperation with the Rhine-Waal University of Applied Sciences, just across the border in the neighbouring Kleve, is in the making. Both in the field of research as well as in education we thus conduct 
global sourcing by combining the best from different sources and locations and we practically created a networked university even though the university as a whole at that time was still residing in their focus on a very localised ‘campus university’. In performing together we are stronger, better and more flexible. See also the recent book by one of the experts in Global Sourcing research,
This sounds as common sense and as something one can easily do if one feels like it. But there is nothing less true. Such a cooperation needs time, time to get to know each other, time to build up trust, time to consolidate the first attempts to cooperate and time to give it a more structural form. So if one waits until these cooperations become crucial and urgent for survival, one is too late to set it up from scratch. Of course, we are not in such a pressing situation, but it nevertheless gives us confidence that we have these thriving cooperations in place.
On an almost regular basis within the Dutch university system for each discipline questions of efficiency and feasibility of having separate departments at different universities are raised. Certainly, geographers are in this sense very well aware, that our niche and place is never naturally given, but needs to be made and remade over and over again, form the network of social and material relations we are in. With our strategic alliances in place and while we continue working on it, we feel we are ready for the future.
As such it is great to welcome the new chair of the Cultural Geography Group at the Wageningen University and Research, Prof. Edward Huijbens, at his inaugural lecture on ‘Developing Earthly Attachments in the Anthropocene’. Currently, we share courses with each other and we jointly conducted this year’s Alexander von Humboldt Lecture Series, related to our joint research interests and in doing so, we were able to deepen our collaborative relationship, and who knows what more there is to come…
Of course, these strategic orientations cannot be seen in isolation, but are part of our much broader strategy towards a very internationally oriented networked university, linked up to the topical international scientific debates, and focussed on transgressing ‘borders’, and building communities, worldwide. The endeavour to work on digitalisation of course work and on the development of globally offered online courses fits into and is instrumental for this strategy. In the same way, our contribution to the current intellectual debates and deliberations in the field of our discipline, through e.g. our Alexander von Humboldt Lecture Series is as well constitutive for this strategic project. And not in the last place, also our positive engagement with ‘the others’ and sharing with others in different contexts contributes to the creation of an open community. A typical case of relational placemaking…