Bridges between East and West

The situation is difficult, explains Heghine Bisharyan: “Armenia has given the world great scientists, but in recent years, due to the outflow of intellectual capital and lack of financial resources, the scientific and research field is developing slowly and significantly lags behind the world which is moving towards development, research and innovation.” The Rector of the European University of Armenia (EUA) goes on to underline the necessity of cooperation with European partners for the development of her country, explaining: “Today, we strive to apply international experience for the sake of Armenia’s development, recovery and progress. Our goal is to study the best international practices, acquire knowledge, skills and abilities and apply all this to the development of our country.”

The International Education and Research Alliance (IERA) will make all this easier, hopes Bisharyan; the initiative to network institutions from Central Asia and the Southern Caucasus with institutions in Europe came from Armenia, where the Alliance is also based. However, its first major meeting will take place on 22/23 September in Bolzano, and is organized by Eurac Research, a founding member. “The alliance was born out of the consideration that many states in the region are in a similar situation to Armenia,” explains Director Stephan Ortner, who, like Bisharyan, sits on the board of IERA. “They are still dependent on Russia, which supplies energy and promises security, among other things, and they are under strong pressure from China, which wants to expand its influence. But the younger generations look to Europe and are guided by European values.” Opening up opportunities for cooperation with these countries is therefore also in Europe’s interest.

Ortner is also a member of the EUA Supervisory Board. The relationship between the research center in Bolzano and the private university in Yerevan goes back to Armenia’s first post-Soviet years, and it actually came about through the word “European”. When the “European University of Armenia” was just a project, its initiators came across a “European Academy” (Eurac Research’s old name) during research and made contact. It was an opportune moment, as the founding of a university was also being considered in Bolzano at the time. The direction, programmes and organization were discussed. The EUA, which wanted to align itself entirely with European models, was grateful for the initial help.

In the more than twenty years that have passed since then, it has developed into one of the largest universities in Armenia, with 5,000 students, 17 bachelor’s and 16 master’s degree programs and, in addition to its headquarters in Yerevan, four other branch campuses across the country. Various Eurac Research departments have already cooperated with the university both in the field of tourism and destination management amongst others. Ortner explains that the Faculty of Computer Science could be interesting for Western partners to collaborate with at a distance – Armenia has a great tradition in mathematical subjects, a potential that companies such as Google and Microsoft are already exploiting with branch offices in the country.

“The most important challenge that we seem to be successfully overcoming is our integration into the European Higher Education Area, the harmonization of national and European qualifications frameworks” explains Bisharyan. Another major task is to integrate researchers, students and lecturers who fled Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023, when almost the entire Armenian population of the embattled region - 120,000 people - fled to Armenia following an offensive by Azerbaijan. The threat of war is also part of Armenia’s difficult situation.

IERA has to operate in a world full of uncertainties. In Iran, two rectors who joined the alliance have since been removed from office; how the situation evolves now remains to be seen, but because “99.9 percent of the students are against the regime, we hope that the opportunities for these young people will not close,” says Ortner. In addition to the Iranian rectors, the head of Zaporizhzhia University of Technology in Ukraine will also be absent when the Alliance discusses the next steps in Bolzano and possible new partnerships with institutions in Germany as he was asked not to leave the country due to the critical situation in the war.