University of Bologna

 

Alessandro Bortolotti

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The University of Bologna was founded in 1088 and is considered to be the oldest university in Western Europe. Nowadays, it still remains one of the most important institutions of higher education across Europe with around 85,000 enrolled students, 11 Schools, 33 research departments, 3000 academics and 3000 administrative staff members.

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The University of Bologna is a comprehensive Higher Education Institution located in the Emilia-Romagna region, in the centre-north of Italy. It is located in five Campuses: the main one in the city of Bologna and 4 additional campuses are located in the Romagna region, in the cities of Forlì, Cesena, Rimini and Ravenna. Besides, the University of Bologna is today the most internationalised of all Italian universities.

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The number of foreign students regularly enrolled is around 6000, while another 2000 arrive every year on international mobility programmes such as LLP/Erasmus, Overseas and Erasmus Mundus Action II. The number of students of the University of Bologna going abroad on exchange programmes or on study grants is more than 2,000.

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The academic offer of the University of Bologna is composed by around 100 Undergraduate programmes, more than 100 Master programmes, 25 of which are completely taught in English or in another foreign language, and more than 90 Doctoral Programmes.  The University of Bologna is currently involved in 8 Erasmus Mundus Master Courses and in 5 Erasmus Mundus Joint Doctorates, three of which are coordinated by the University of Bologna.

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In the last 5 years Bologna has been selected as coordinator and partner in many EU projects (LLP Multilateral projects, ALFA; Tempus, Edulink, VII FP; Atlantis), in order to foster internationalization of education through activities such as the creation of joint programmes and modules, the organisation of mobility flows, the creation of mobility windows within study programmes and the development of special services for international students.

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The University of Bologna, based on the experience and results obtained in the period 2007-2013 in the internationalization of education, has recently developed its new Internationalization strategy named “ALMA GLOBAL 2020”, which is also summarized in the ECHE 2014-2020.

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Wider expertise in the development and management of JPs is internationally recognized to UNIBO. European projects for internationalization of higher education are supported in the application and management phase by the International relations division at central level. This unit provides support in the management of the grant (how to coordinate partners in spending and reporting their budget share) as well as in the general management of the project providing counselling in the organisation, dissemination, evaluation and monitoring of the project’s activities.