{"id":158278,"date":"2026-09-17T14:51:45","date_gmt":"2026-09-17T12:51:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/?p=158278"},"modified":"2026-09-30T14:56:57","modified_gmt":"2026-09-30T12:56:57","slug":"the-urv-collaborates-with-the-largest-university-in-palestine-to-provide-a-safe-academic-environment-despite-the-restrictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/en\/the-urv-collaborates-with-the-largest-university-in-palestine-to-provide-a-safe-academic-environment-despite-the-restrictions\/","title":{"rendered":"The URV collaborates with the largest university in Palestine to provide a safe academic environment despite the restrictions"},"content":{"rendered":"

An-Najah National University (Nablus, West Bank) is the largest in the State of Palestine and plays a central role in community development and the country’s higher education system. But it operates in a context marked by prolonged political instability, restrictions related to the occupation, recurring cycles of violence, mobility restrictions and economic vulnerability. These conditions directly affect academic continuity, access to campus facilities, research collaboration and the day-to-day running of university life, and therefore place pressure on students, academic staff and institutional governance.<\/p>\n

This is why a team from the Universitat Rovira i Virgili and An-Najah National University has launched a project to promote environments where, despite the aforementioned obstacles, students and staff can study, teach and conduct research in inclusive and safe academic settings. The academic staff of both universities have already taken the first steps in an institutional diagnosis to determine the priorities of the Palestinian university, to shed light on the informal practices already in place and to identify the resources and services that are required when a student or academic staff member needs support.<\/p>\n

The team from the West Bank will visit the URV at a later date to compare the governance and student support models of both institutions. On the basis of this, they will develop an institutional framework to establish the measures and the units responsible for promoting emotional well-being and providing safe, inclusive and supportive academic environments. Afterwards, they will draw up a detection and referral protocol to clearly define the pathways for identifying and referring students in vulnerable situations and to establish remote support channels to ensure the continuity of education when there are mobility restrictions.<\/p>\n

According to Janaina Minelli de Oliveira, a professor at the URV\u2019s Department of Education, “the aim is not to turn teachers into mental health professionals, but to ensure that responses to situations of need do not depend solely on informal contacts or individual initiative.”<\/p>\n

\"\"
Students from An-Najah National University.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

De Oliveira was also thesis supervisor for Heba Ishtayah, now a professor at An-Najah National University, and they have joined forces to promote a university system that defends human rights even in contexts as complex as that of Palestine. As a result of this, the project, “Institutional strengthening for emotional well-being and the construction of supportive academic environments at An-Najah National University” became the highest-rated project in the latest call for international cooperation projects by URV Solid\u00e0ria<\/a>, which are led by members of the university community and carried out in countries with a medium or low development index.<\/p>\n

In addition to Janaina Minelli de Oliveira, the URV team includes Anna Huguet, Fabia Morales and Jorge Manuel Due\u00f1as from the Department of Psychology, and Judith Balany\u00e0, a professor at the Department of Pedagogy. At An-Najah National University, in addition to Heba Ishtayah, staff members working on the project are a professor from the Department of Psychology, Abdelkarim Abdelraziq, from the Centre for International Scholarships and Projects, and Mohammad Yasin and Mosab Maari, from the e-learning <\/em>student support centre. De Oliveira, who is a member of the Social Impact and Education (IMSE) research group, is also part of the URV x Palestine committee.<\/p>\n

In addition, URV Solid\u00e0ria funds another cooperation project with Palestine through the same call, “Developing Intercultural Communicative Competence in Palestinian EFL Education through Teacher Training and Pedagogical Materials (INTERACT-PA)”, led by URV professor Andrea Roxana Bellot with the participation of the Language and Technology Research Group \u2013 ReLaTe, and in collaboration with the Palestine Technical University \u2013 Kadoorie.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The cooperation project aims to institutionalise the frameworks to ensure the emotional wellbeing and support of students and staff at An-Najah National University<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":157643,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[815,3494,3496,82,818,235,796,795,196],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-158278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cooperation","category-pedagogy","category-psychology","category-general-en","category-press-releases","category-society-culture","category-pdi-en","category-ptgas-en","category-international"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=158278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/158278\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157643"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=158278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=158278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaridigital.urv.cat\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=158278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}