October 26, 2022

Academic and non-academic cooperation in the Mediterranean area, a talk between IULM and UNIMED within the IULM Flow

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On 19 October 2022, Prof Andrea Miconi from IULM University met Mr. Marcello Scalisi, UNIMED Director to talk about Academic and non-academic cooperation in the Mediterranean area.” The talk was organised within the IULM Flow, a series of online meetings and dialogues between a guest and one of the IULM professors.

The meeting saw Andrea Miconi, Associate Professor of Media Sociology and Horizon 2020 Principal Investigator at IULM University, discussing with Marcello Scalisi, UNIMED Director, on the situation of the Euro-Mediterranean cooperation.

Different initiatives in the Mediterranean region, with a specific focus on crisis areas such as Libya, Syria, Palestine, and post-revolutionary Tunisia, were discussed in the 60 minutes’ talk. 

Mr. Scalisi introduced UNIMED – how it works and its history, emphasizing its role as a network of 150 universities from 24 countries, not only around the Euro-Mediterranean region but also from the Balkan and Western Balkan such as Albania and Kosovo and northern Europe like Finland. UNIMED is an independent network that gathers different institutions under the umbrella of Academic cooperation and bridges the way between international interlocutors.

“We help our members in terms of how to internationalize more and more, supporting them in looking for opportunities, in knowing other members, and organizing training, activities, and events. We discuss daily with the directors of international relations – of the UNIMED Associated Universities – and this is extremely important because this means that we know our members, we know our region and we know their education system.”  said Mr. Scalisi.

The UNIMED Director also showcased the different projects and events run by the network, highlighting their importance in the work of UNIMED, and mentioning, among the others, the UNIMED Week in Brussels, “[…] a three-day of meetings with the European Commission Department in charge of the Euro-Mediterranean cooperation where we can hear about the work of the European Commission, from one side, and at the same time, we can offer the point of view of our members to share ideas and information.” 

The discussion continued tackling North-South cooperation, employability, migration, politics, youth, research, and more. The students and the future generations are strategic to make a change. For this reason, UNIMED is organising the First Mediterranean Student Summit, taking place next November, and inviting students coming from the northern and the southern shores of the Mediterranean to discuss the University they want in the future. 

We have prejudices on both sides of the Mediterranean and this is the reason why we insist a lot on doing activities to improve what we call “the Mediterranean generation of youth students“, concluded UNIMED Director, Marcello Scalisi.

You can hear the full talk and find out further aspects of the UNIMED agenda here.