NSU Involved in Russian-Italian Cooperation

The first session of the working party on cooperation between Russian and Italian universities was held in Turin (Italy) last week. Seven universities from each side gave notice of developing their partnership. Novosibirsk State University was represented in Turin by Olga Kuznetsova (the International Relations Department of NSU), with our partner university, the Catholic University from Milan, represented by Prof. Anna Bonola.

Novosibirsk State University actively participating in cooperation with European countries, Italy has been a long-term partner of our university. It was the main reason for NSU to engage in the working party organized by the conference of Italian university rectors (CRUI) and the Association of Global Universities (AGU).

The Rector of the University of Turin, Professor Gianmaria Ajani opened the session of the working party pointing out the main aim of the group as enhancing opportunities for cooperation between the Association of Russian universities (AGU) and the leading Italian universities (CRUI) in order to promote joint projects in the area of academic and scientific cooperation. The promising directions include studying Russian and Italian as foreign languages, linguistics and literature, economics, theoretical physics and mathematics, chemistry and chemical engineering, biology and others.

The steps to follow implied conducting online summer and winter schools, establishing the common system of grants for Russian and Italian students and researchers, as well as academic positions for Italian professors at Russian universities.

The session proceeded with bilateral negotiations between the Russian and Italian universities, in the course of which the representatives of NSU and the Catholic University (Milan) discussed the prospects of launching joint Master’s courses in Humanities.

‘Italian students and researchers have been traditionally interested in studying the Russian language and culture,’ says Olga Kuznetsova. ‘We discussed how we could develop programs in the field of linguistics and history with the professor of the University of Turin Marco Buttino. Another professor we met was the coordinator on Russian-Italian cooperation from the University of Siena, Maurizio Pompella, who was happy to discuss the development of student exchanges between the universities. The main result of the meetings for NSU, of course, was the particular steps on coordinating joint programs with our long-term partner, the Catholic University from Milan.’

Apart from NSU, the Russian participants of the session represented Tomsk State University, National Research University Higher School of Economics, ITMO University, National University of Science and Technology MISiS, N. I. Lobachevsky State University of Nizhny Novgorod and Ural Federal University. The Italian partners were from the University of Turin, the Catholic University in Milan, the University of Rome Tor Vergata, Naples Eastern University (Università degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale"), the University of Siena and Polytechnic University of Turin. Participating in the session was the Scientific Attache of the Italian Embassy in Moscow Prof. Pietro Fre.