About us

The Florence Network is one of Europe’s oldest nursing and midwifery networks established in 1995. The Florence Network compromises 51 Universities (Higher Educational Institutions) from 22 European countries.

The Florence Network is a European Higher Education co-operation of Nursing and Midwifery Departments of European Universities with the aim of identifying and developing educational, scientific, practice and pedagogical commonalities. The Florence Network, while respecting existing variations of ideologies, strategies and visions of Nursing and Midwifery education across Europe, nonetheless, the Florence Network strives to identify commonalities, to enable convergences and to promote mobility between Countries and Institutions as required by European educational treaties.

The objective of the Florence Network is to develop and improve the quality of European higher education in nursing and midwifery by means of international co-operation in the field of education, scientific research and development. In this way the Network aspires to improve the image of the Nursing and Midwifery professions and to improve the quality of European health care.

The main goals of the Florence Network are:

  • To raise the profile of European Nursing and Midwifery
  • To stimulate and organise the exchange of students between Florence Network members
  • To stimulate and organise the exchange of lecturers between Florence Network members
  • To contribute to the quality development of curricula in European Nursing & Midwifery Education
  • To identify common nursing and midwifery research interests and develop research collaboration
  • To develop and organise common projects, and intensive Nursing and Midwifery programmes and/ or activities within ERASMUS+ and other programmes

The Florence Network welcomes Nursing and Midwifery schools from all European countries, is democratically structured and is inclusive of both faculty and students.

Florence Network Permanent Board

President of the Florence Network  
Lisbeth Vinberg-Engel
KP University College Copenhagen, Denmark
Faculty of Health
Department of Nursing and nutrition
LIEN@kp.dk
Vice –president of the Florence Network
Laura Visiers Jiménez
Campus San Rafael. Escuela de Enfermería y Fisioterapia San Juan de Dios. Universidad Pontificia de Comillas, Madrid, Spain
University Center Spain lvisiers@comillas.edu

Academic Committee of the Florence Network

Maria Malliarou
University of Thessaly, Greece
malliarou@uth.gr  
Renzo Moreale
Udine University, Italy   Renzo.moreale@uniud.it
Ronald Ars
NHL/Stenden, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands
ronald.ars@nhlstenden.com

Visibility Group of the Florence Network

Margaret Moran
Edinburgh Napier University Scotland
m.moran@napier.ac.uk
Anna Bonmati Tomàs          
Universitat de Girona, Spain anna.bonmati@udg.edu  
Mirjam Palsma
Hanze University of Applied Sciences, Groningen, the Netherlands
m.palsma@pl.hanze.nl  

Research Group of the Florence Network

Mirza Oruč
University of Zenica, Bosnia&Herzegovina
Department of medicine and nursing
mirza.oruc@gmail.com
Federica Canzan
University of Verona, Italy
Department of nursing
federica.canzan@univr.it
Inge Tency
Odisee, Belgium
Department of midwifery
inge.tency@odisee.be

Student Board

The Student Board (SB) is composed of five elected members, hereunder a President and Vice-President and three additional board members. SB members are elected by the students present at the SB Annual Meeting and there is one student vote per institution. Our aim is to promote the visibility of the network among the students, encourage students’ exchanges between the institutions and facilitate the discussion about nursing and midwifery educational and professional issues across Europe.

Furthermore, the Student Board has an important responsibility to prepare and organize the student programme for the Florence Network Annual Meeting (FNAM).

Student Board of the Florence Network

PresidentVice-presidentAcademic CommitteeVisibility student groupNewsletter Editor
Tim Mitnik
Frankfurt University of Applied Science, Germany
timmitnik@hotmail.com
Marc Folkers
Hanze, Groningen, The Netherlands m.g.h.folkers@st.hanze.nl
Johannes Smids, NHL/Stenden University of Applied Sciences, Leeuwarden, The Netherlands
johannes.smids@student.nhlstenden.com
Isabella Paneteli, Ediburgh Napier University, Schotland
4058547@live.napier.ac.uk
Diana Sarkyova
University of Northampton, England       Diana.sykrkyova19@gmail.com 

(other) Student Board Members

Dionysia Anagnostopouloou

Benedikt Bosse
University of Thessaly, Larissa, Greece

LAP University, Finland


dioanagnost@uth.gr

benedikt.bosse@student.lab.fi