Partners

University of Murcia

The University of Murcia (UM) is the most important teaching and researching organization in the Region of Murcia. It is a public institution devoted to provide higher education in different programs. This university has more than 29.000 students; with a teaching staff of 2.612 professors spread over 5 campuses. Researching is one of the pillars of our University; it covers 8 scientific areas: Economy, Health, Experimenting, Law, Social studies, Technology, Humanities, and Mathematics. In some disciplines, it is currently positioned at the top of the world rankings such as in the CWTS Leiden ranking of excellence (e.g., second place in Mathematical and IT). Some other examples of this level of excellence are also the achievement of multiple competitive projects in Spain and abroad (such as the Campus Mare Nostrum of International Excellence 37/38 –created by UM, alongside with its neighbour Polytechnic University of Cartagena), as well as the clear social commitment acknowledged in 2014 with Telefónica Ability Award, granted for being the best public entity regarding the inclusion of disable people. Regarding the international level, the UM has a large experience in hosting collaborative projects and promoting research excellence. The UM has signed agreements with over 900 universities around the world. More than 120 European projects belonging to different Frames RTD Programmes have been managed in the past, 12 of them within the 7th FP. At national level, 198 RTD projects were held in the previous decades. It is a reference Centre for the European Commission and the large amount of projects coordinated by our institution is the evidence of it. The UM, through the International Relations Office, took part as a partner/coordinator in several European Union programmes and other events sponsored by different national and international financial entities. It should be remarked that in 2011 the UM was the coordinator of the Jean Monnet Chair “European Cultures under Transformation” and since 2015 it carries out the Jean Monnet Module “Cultures of Security. New challenges for Europe”. The UM Law Faculty is one of the oldest in Spain, with more than 3,000 students and degrees on Law, Political Sciences and Criminology. In 2013, the University created the Centre of European Studies (CEEUM) with the objective of meeting researchers from several areas (philosophy, sociology, law scholars…) interested on European issues. The activities of the Centre for European Studies are focused on four lines of action: teaching, research, transfer of research outcomes, and publications.

The Italian-Spanish Seminar on constitutional studies

The Italian-Spanish Seminar on Constitutional Studies was created in 2011 by a group of Italian and Spanish junior researchers as an academic thinking society or forum alongside with the Faculty of Law of the University of Bologna and the Royal College of Spain in Bologna. The aim of his Seminar is to be a meeting point to generate a European intergenerational academic discussion. It is orientated to junior scholars and PhD. students in order to give them the opportunity to dialogue with well-known professors and experts, sharing their academic views on constitutional issues which affect Europe as well as Italy and Spain in a comparative perspective. Among the activities already organized by the Seminar, we should remark three international conferences in which more than fifty young researchers, as well as prestigious scholars and experts have participated in each of them. The first conference was celebrated in Bologna in 2012 about “Challenges for individual rights in the XXI century”; the second, in Madrid in 2014 about “Constitutional challenges regarding European integration”; and the last one in Catania in 2016 about “Sovereignty and representation: constitutionalism in the age of globalization”. As a result, different books have been published: 1) Challenges of individual rights in the XXI century, Thomson-Reuters, 2013, with three volumes: Life and Science (444 pp.), Family and Religion (384 pp.), and The Internet and new technologies (388 pp.). 2) Constitutional challenges regarding European integration (Editum [on line], 2015, 1029 pp.). 3) Constitución e integración europea [Constitution and European integration] (Dykinson, 2017), with two volumes: Forma política, gobernanza económica y organización territorial [Political system, governance and regional organisation] (325 pp.); and Derechos fundamentales y sus garantías jurisdiccionales [Fundamental rights and its judicial protection] (285 pp.). Currently, the Seminar maintains a network with more than fifty young researchers, mainly from Italian and Spanish universities (but not only from there), supported by a scientific committee formed by prestigious scholars and judges. Its aim is to keep promoting activities about European constitutional issues and to expand it with researches from other European countries. The Seminar is a non-formal organization (without legal personality).

The International School for PhD programs of the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia (UNED)

The International School for PhD programs of the UNED was founded in 2012 and it has 19 different PhD. programs in Arts and Humanities, Sciences, Social Sciences and Law, Health, Architecture and Engineering. One of them is a Doctorate in European Union Studies, whose assumption is the increasing importance of university studies on the European Union, not only in Member States, but also in third countries where interest on the European Union is growing increasingly. The objective of the UNED Doctorate in European Union Studies is to build an area of Higher Education and Multidisciplinary Investigation on the European Union, permitting the training of high-quality investigators and the preparation of doctoral theses in this important field of studies and research. The Doctorate in European Union studies is part of the framework of European Doctoral Studies that have been recently developed in the most important universities, both in European and in non-European countries.

The UNED is the National Distance Teaching University in Spain, a public university established in 1972 with a large reputation on teaching and research. UNED campus headquarters are located in Madrid and it also has 61 Associated Centres spread all over the country. Moreover, there are UNED Support Centres in 13 countries in Europe, America and Africa. UNED academic programmes cover the whole range of university degrees offering 27 bachelor courses (11 in Social Sciences, 6 in Humanities, 6 in Engineering & Computer Science and 4 in Science), 68 official master programmes and 18 PhD studies. All these programmes are accredited and periodically assessed by ANECA (Spanish National Accreditation Agency). UNED has more than 205,000 students being the university with the largest number of students in Spain. Bachelor and Master Courses are offered off-campus combining online learning methods with direct support provided at the main campus and at the “Associated Centres”. Research groups at UNED are engaged in collaboration with industrial partners and in projects supported by the European Union and by some financial institutions in Spain. Thus, the following table summarizes the EU supported projects with the participation of UNED researching teams.

The School for PhD programs in law of the University of Bologna

The PhD program in law at the University of Bologna began thirty years ago and develops research activities with seminars and conferences with national and international legal scholars. The current director of the School for doctoral programs in Law of the University of Bologna is Prof. Andrea Morrone.

The University of Bologna is the oldest university in the Western world, founded in the XI century. Currently, the University of Bologna continues to generate and disseminate knowledge and culture. It has 5 campuses (Bologna, Cesena, Forlì, Ravenna e Rimini), 11 Schools, 33 Departments and 12 research and training centres. With 85,244 (2015/2016) students, it is the most popular university in Italy. The University offers: 215 Degree Programmes (A.Y. 2017/2018); 92 first cycle 3-year programmes; 110 second cycle programmes and 13 single cycle programmes; 71 International degree programmes, 47 of which are taught in English; 41 PhD programmes (A.Y. 2016/17); 39 specialisation schools; 66 first and second level professional master's programmes, 16 of which are international. And it generates 11,000 (average) number of research products, more than 400 patents, 147 funded research projects (H2020 and LIFE), 10 SIR projects (Scientific Independence of Young Researcher), 7 Inter-departmental Centres for Industrial research (CIRI).