Geminae Program - UNITA's partner universities around the world

Taking advantage of increased visibility and attractiveness of European Universities, UNITA aims to create a network of "sister" universities - the Geminae program- which will allow sharing best practices among universities.

This network of "sister" universities, based on the quality of the institutions, will be initially based on the active cooperation between Outside European Union Universities and UNITA’s partners, giving preference to institutions of romance language speaking countries. But Geminae aims to be a growing community of universities that will continuously increase its partners as time goes.

This project aims to cooperate with UNITA’s associate partners: the l’Agence Universitiarie de la Francophone (AUF), the Organización de Estados Iberoamericanos (OEI) and the Associação das Universidades de Língua Portuguesa (AULP). As these institutions are quite active in roman speaking countries outside Europe, their role will be key in identifying new partners and key cooperation topics.

The objective of the Geminae program is to broaden the exchange of best practices developed by UNITA in all areas, i.e. training, research, innovation and links with society. It will facilitate the mobility of students from these institutions to UNITA, and even encourage students to settle, at least occasionally, in UNITA’s countries and regions. Indeed, some UNITA regions are depopulating, and others need skilled workforce, in sum, all are looking for talented people to develop UNITA’s region economic and social activities, while increasing their competences and enjoying a rural and mountainous quality life.

KEY AREAS OF UNITA

UNITA will offer an important number of programs and destinations for students who prepare themselves through UNITA’s intercomprehension training. Thanks to these courses, INCOMING and OUTGOING students will move easily across Romance speaking countries as they will be able to communicate in French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish and Rumanian.

Cultural heritage, renewable energies and circular economy represent the key thematic areas of UNITA, they are the link between the past and the future of Romance countries. They are critical areas to support the necessary economic transition for the prosperity of UNITA’s rural and mountainous regions, all while tackling climate change and sustainable development. UNITA expects to cooperate with its Geminae partners in developing research and innovation projects, teaching programs and micro-credentials involving teacher-researchers, in a mutually enriching dynamic.

To finance these partnerships, UNITA and its partners will participate in different calls for projects, such as Erasmus+ capacity building projects or initiatives from the "African Research Initiative for Scientific Excellence" (Arise).