Participating universities
K.U.Leuven
Situated at the heart of Western Europe, K.U.Leuven has been a centre of learning for almost six centuries. Founded in 1425 by Pope Martin V, K.U. Leuven bears the honour of being the oldest catholic university in the world still in existence and the oldest university in the Low Countries. The university is located in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern part of Belgium. With the Dutch language's steady rise to renewed prominence, the university was eventually split in 1968 into two new universities. The French-speaking Université Catholique de Louvain moved to the newly built campus in Louvain-la-Neuve. The Dutch-speaking Katholieke Universiteit Leuven remained in the historic town of Leuven.
Such a rich history of nearly six hundred years has provided K.U.Leuven with its own dynamic international dimension. Today international co-operation is regarded as essential for a modern university. Top-level research is judged according to international standards and implies interaction, co-operation and exchange, both of researchers and results. One European survey ranks K.U.Leuven among the top ten European universities in terms of its scholarly output. Likewise with regard to teaching, several quality surveys demonstrate that K.U.Leuven stands on par with internationally respected institutions in a large number of fields.
This academic reputation attracts students from all over the world. K.U.Leuven has been involved in the Erasmus student exchange programme since its launch in Europe in the 1980s; the growing success of the Erasmus programme later on led to the launch of the Socrates programme and today K.U.Leuven has over 300 contracts under this programme. Each year around 600 international Erasmus students spend part of their study programme in Leuven, while about 500 of our students share the same European experience at a foreign university.
K.U.Leuven currently hosts around 29,000 students, more than 10% of whom are international students (from 102 nations). In terms of its personnel, there are 4,663 members in the academic staff, 2,492 in the administrative and technical staff and 7,030 in the teaching hospital staff. With regard to its physical facilities, the university occupies a total area of 1,058,445 square metres and it has a total of 26,606 rooms. On the academic side, the university is composed of 14 faculties, 50 departments and about 240 sub-departments. Further, its network of 30 auxiliary libraries now houses a total of 3,000,000 volumes. And more specifically on its medical facilities, the K.U.Leuven supports 5 hospitals, 3 affiliated hospitals, with a total of 2,057 hospital beds for the acutely ill.
R.U. Nijmegen
Radboud University Nijmegen is one of the leading academic communities in the Netherlands. Renowned for its green campus, modern buildings, and state-of-the-art equipment, it has eight faculties and enrolls over 16.000 students in approximately 90 study programmes (about 40 Bachelor and more than 50 Master programmes).
Radboud University Nijmegen is situated on a green campus in the oldest Dutch city. It is a welcoming, forward-looking, research-based centre of learning that covers the full range of academic disciplines. All the university buildings, lecture rooms, facilities and the University Hospital are situated together on the former Heyendael estate.
The international dimension of education and research plays an essential part at the Radboud University Nijmegen. It forms an integral part of education and research and is inextricably bound up with the quality thereof. Internationalisation is also a crucial factor in social service. The university's internationalisation policy is carried out both at a central and decentralised level, and manifests itself in, among other things, the mobility of both students and teachers
To support its international policy and to strengthen its research and education, the executive board of Radboud University is intensifying its cooperation with the following universities: Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (Belgium), Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Munster (Germany), Universität Duisburg-Essen (Germany), Universität Zürich (Switserland), University of Glasgow (United Kingdom), Università degli Studi di Siena (Italy) and Jagielloninan University (Poland). Furthermore, Radboud University has about 80 bilateral agreements with other universities and 247 exchange agreements with European partners in the framework of the Socrates programme.
Department 'Ethics, Philosophy and History of Medicine'
University of Padova
Along with universities as Bologna, Paris, Oxford and Cambridge, that of Padova was one of the first to exemplify the idea of a Gymnasium Omnium Disciplinarum - an educational model that can now be seen throughout the world. Though the university's year of foundation is generally given as 1222, that in fact only marks the date from which there are records of a "fixed and publicly recognised university established within the city" and so the actual foundation can be dated even early, to a period when a number of professors and students had left the University of Bologna as a result of "offences to academic freedom and the failure to observe the privileges that had been guaranteed to teachers and pupils".
Studying in Padova also means enjoying Padova, taking advantage of a stimulating environment that combines art and science, modernity and tradition.
Padova is growing constantly, and its commercial and industrial development in the last few decades have made it one of the main cities of North-East Italy.
However, the place has managed to keep a lot of its medieval character intact: surrounded by sixteenth-century walls, the old city centre is a place of busy market squares, waterways and silent arcaded streets where one can find towers, churches, palaces and surprising secret gardens.
