An agreement signed between both universities will enable Japanese students to study at the URV and URV students to travel to Hiroshima. During his first visit to the URV, the rector of HU, Mitsuo Ochi, signed an agreement to increase the existing collaboration between the two universities.

The rector Mitsuo Ochi and the vice president Toshiyuki Sat of Hiroshima University (HU) made their first visit to Tarragona on 6 May to gain first-hand knowledge of the URV, with whom they have been collaborating for several years. The Japanese rector and the rector of the URV, Josep Anton Ferré, signed an agreement to exchange undergraduate and postgraduate students as of the 2017-18 academic year. URV students will be able to visit Hiroshima University and study subjects in Japanese language and culture, science and technology and economics.

The two institutions already collaborate through the International Network of Universities (INU) and the international seminars organised every March since 2013 by the URV’s Faculty of Law (Mobility and Human Rights) and the Faculty of Nursing (Caring in Nursing). A total of 27 Japanese students have attended the Law seminar since it started, and a further 23 have participated in the Nursing seminar. They are accompanied by professors from their home university and share classrooms, experiences and leisure activities with staff and students from the URV.

Since 2010, URV students have also been able to attend summer courses in Hiroshima during the Student Seminar for Global Citizenship and Peace and the Master’s Summer School, which are held to coincide with the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb. The seminar has been made possible by the collaboration of the INU, of which both universities are members, and by the assistance that HU receives from the Japanese government.

During the visit, the representatives of HU met the Vice-Rector for Internationalisation, Mar Gutiérrez-Colón, and the head of the International Center, Marina Casals. They also shared their impressions with the director of the annual seminar on mobility and human rights, Professor Víctor Merino. The Japanese delegation expressed their high level of satisfaction with the existing collaboration with the URV and stated their intention to continue sending students to the annual international seminar. They invited the URV’s teaching and research staff to visit Hiroshima University with a view to promoting future research collaboration between the two institutions.