This issue of Der Donauraum encompasses three exceptional papers by participants of the 17th DRC Summer School that took place in July 2022 in Vienna. By investigating the perceptions of stakeholders and observers of the Bar-Boljare Highway Project in Montenegro, Thomas Dentant shows the relevance of expert opinions and professional research for the success of infrastructure projects, and how neglecting them can lead to failure. In his contribution, Grant Dunnery analyses the geopolitical dimension of the Western Balkan’s EU Integration by evaluating the role of education and mobility in academia in the context of EU-Balkan, Sino-Balkan, and Sino-EU relations. By that he points out the importance of a strong EU engagement in the region. Anastasiya Lendel, who was holding a research fellowship for Ukrainians granted by the DRC and the IDM in 2022, outlines the various problems that Russia’s aggression has confronted Ukraine’s education system with. Despite these hardships, Lendel shows new opportunities that arise from the crisis by learning from the postwar experiences of Balkan countries.  

Finally, in addition to these articles, the present issue of Der Donauraum presents the results of the DRC Strategic Foresight Project 2022 in which 18 young researchers from the Danube Region present trends for the Higher Education System and develop concrete scenarios as well as policy recommendations to improve education in the future. 

With contributions by Thomas Dentant, Grant Dunnery, Anastasiya Lendel, Yuliia Fetko, Sergii Geraskov, Indira Hajnacs, Yuliia Stoika, Cristina Dumitru, Mihai Christopher Marian Radovici, Gresa Rasiti, Ljiljan Veselinović, Emilia Blank, Lukas Danko, Kata Katz, Volodymyr Polishchuk, Ivan Rubinić, Celeste Luciano, Tiberiu Nica, Nikola Ranković, Karin Widmann and Gabriel Zvîncă.