Strategic University Partners
Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina
The partnership of UoC and UNSAM is based on serveral recent cooperations in research as well as teaching. Since the general agreement was signed in 2013 several Cologne students have already taken advantage of an exchange year in Buenos Aires. More importantly is the elaboration of a joint MA-degree within the Erasmus Mundus Programme of the EU that is recently under evaluation. This programme will establish an MA programme in Latin American Studies. Partners are the UoC, the U of Seville, Universidad de Guadalajara / Mexico, UNSAM and the Université de Toulouse. A researcher from UNSAM is currently working as a Humboldt Fellow at the UoC, another researcher stayed here earlier with a Thyssen-Humboldt Fellowship and recently received a contract as external faculty member (measure of the excellence initiative) for the years 2014 and 2015.
University of the Western Cape, South Africa
The Anthropology Department at UoC has been working with various departments and institutes at the University of the Western Cape for many years. Starting with collaboration with the History Department and the Programme for Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS) in the late 1990s within the framework of the DFG- funded Collaborative Research Centre (SFB) “Arid Climate, Adaptation and Cultural Innovation in Africa”, the History Department and PLAAS were counterparts in sub-projects. They collaborated in research, worked with research funds from Cologne and co-supervised PhD candidates. During the last decade collaboration has been intensified. Within the VW Foundation-funded project “Human Mobility, Networks and Institutions in the Management of Natural Resources in Contemporary Africa”, PLAAS became one of the major cooperating partners. Two PhD students were jointly supervised and successfully completed the programme. It is planned to extend cooperation to UWC’s Departments of Geography and Anthropology/Sociology.
Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), India
The Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) has about 5,000 students and an excellent teacher-student ratio (approx. 1:10). Special care is taken to draw students from the underprivileged castes and ethnic groups. Foreign students constitute some 10 per cent of the annual enrolment. In 2012, the National Assessment and Accreditation Council gave the university a grade of 3.9 out of 4, the highest grade awarded to any educational institution in the country. Bilateral collaboration exists since 2005 between the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), a public university founded in 1970, and UoC’s Institutes of Geography, Regional Planning and Indology.
Sun Yat-sen University, China
UoC and China have a long tradition of cooperation, especially with the Sun Yat-Sen University. Since 2002, UoC and SYSU have been collaborating intensively, the UoC’s Institute of Geography in particular has been involved in numerous large interdisciplinary research projects with the SYSU. A Memorandum of Understanding was signed at department level (geography) in 2004. The cooperation between UoC and SYSU culminated in November 2012 in the ratification and signing of a Global Network Partnership contract. With the „Global Network Partneruniversities“ the University of Cologne is developing a comprehensive and intensive form of cooperation in research and teaching: university-wide, establishing innovative structures and oriented towards institutional sustainability. Joint research, teaching and student exchange programmes at the faculty-level currently encompass six departments from three UoC faculties.