In the last decades, university heritage has garnered increasing and widespread interest: several papers and books have been published, and various activities and conferences have been organised around it. This has started to enlighten us about the size and diversity of university heritage, as well as the difficulties to manage and promote it. In particular, one issue is recurrently at stake: why should universities care about their heritage? There are national or local museums that deal professionally with heritage of all kinds. Why should universities bother with their own heritage? Why should they preserve it, what for and how? Reversing these questions, how could we actually make university heritage relevant for universities? How should it be made a central issue for universities’ three , namely research, teaching and the so-called Third Mission, the engagement with local communities?

These are some of the main issues addressed in this volume, which brings together selected papers that were presented at the 16th Universeum Annual Meeting, held at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece, from 11 to 13 June 2015.