From 19 to 22 January, the Executive Director of the EU-LAC Foundation, Dr Adrián Bonilla, and the Senior Programme Manager for Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation, and Culture, Dr Anna Barrera Vivero, undertook a mission to Barcelona to strengthen ties with existing partners, to discuss possible joint activities within the thematic framework of Higher Education and Science, Technology and Innovation, and to present the Foundation to new potential partners.
During this mission, the Executive Director and the Senior Programme Manager held a total of eight meetings with strategic partners and their representatives. On the first day of activities, they met with Nicolás Patrici and Elizabeth Colucci, from OBREAL Global. In this meeting, they recapitulated on the cooperation of both parties during the past year and agreed on further collaboration by the following means in the year 2022: co-organisation of several training and capacity building workshops on open science, participation at the EU-LAC Young Scientists’ Network Days, and the promotion of the intersection between regional, inter-regional and international dimensions of Higher Education and Science. In this context, the both organisations reaffirmed their commitment to further the activities of the working group linked to the Matrix of Objectives and Strategic Lines of Higher Education.
Likewise, Dr Bonilla, Dr Barrera and Leire Pajín, President of the EU-LAC Foundation, met with Antonio Segura i Mas, President of the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), Pol Morillas, Director of CIDOB, and Anna Ayuso, Senior Research Fellow at CIDOB, to exchange views on the bi-regional relationship between the European Union (EU) and Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), the political context, current challenges and the priorities of the European foreign policy regarding LAC. They followed up on co-organised events in 2021 and delineated plans for further cooperation between both organisations.
In a meeting with Alfons Martinell, co-founder of Interarts and Honorary Director of the UNESCO Chair “Cultural Policies and Cooperation”, Dr Bonilla, Dr Barrera and Leire Pajín, discussed their aim of creating “EU-LAC Cultural Campus” activities. Similarly, when meeting with Jacint Jordana, Director of the Barcelona Institute of International Studies (IBEI), Andrea C. Bianculli, Assistant Professor, and Laia Mestres, Institutional Relations and Academic Internship Coordinator, Dr Bonilla and Dr Barrera discussed closer collaborations and illustrated the services of the EU-LAC Foundation to students.
Additionally, the EU-LAC Foundation attended further meetings with representatives from the Government of Catalonia, to present the Foundation and identify areas of shared interest, such as the EU-LAC Dialogue Session on Cultural Heritage and Routes, and cooperation in the area of Open Science.
Lastly, the Foundation’s delegation met with Josep M. Vilalta, Director of the Global Universities Network for Innovation (GUNi) and Executive Director of the Catalan Association of Public Universities (ACUP), Jaume Fortuny, Project Officer at Guni and ACUP, and Nicolás Patrici, OBREAL Global. During this meeting, all parties agreed on common interest in collaborating in an international cooperation initiative in Higher Education and the stronger involvement of GUNi-ACUP in targeted activities of the Foundation and vice-versa.
The mission to Barcelona yielded overall very positive outcomes for the EU-LAC Foundation. The Executive Director and Senior Programme Manager were able to follow up on events, work out a substantial plan for upcoming activities, increase the Foundation’s and its activities’ visibility in the area of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation and Culture, as well as to strengthen existing ties with important partners and establish promising contacts with potential new partners, such as GUNi-ACUP, the Government of Catalonia, and IBEI, both in the realm of Culture and Science and Higher Education.
