In April we celebrated our long-standing partnership with the University of Notre Dame in North America.
Representatives from our Arts & Humanities, Science, and Social Sciences and Health faculties joined Professor Claire O'Malley, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Global) on a delegation to the University of Notre Dame.
During the visit, we discussed areas of common interest including research collaboration and student mobility, we also shared best practice on supporting our respective partners in Ukraine. Our delegation also met with the University of Notre Dame's new Provost, Prof. John McGreevy, who was recently appointed as an Hon. Professorial Fellow in the History of Catholicism through Durham's Centre for Catholic Studies.
Strategic partners
We formalised our partnership with the University of Notre Dame in 2014, with the signing of an institution-wide Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). This signing marked the culmination of a series of reciprocal visits dating back to 2012 that identified strategically significant areas of academic collaboration.
Our early partnership centred on the relationship between Notre Dame and our Department of Theology Centre for Catholic Studies. However, our partnership has extended to connections at individual academic and departmental level in many other disciplines.
Broadening our partnership
In 2019 we re-signed our MoU with the University of Notre Dame. The re-signing reaffirmed our commitment to broadening our partnership and exploring further areas of collaboration, including student exchange. Our student exchange agreement with Notre Dame (two places each way) was established in the 2021 – 22 academic year and offers undergraduate students the opportunity to study one year of the degree programme at the partnering institution.
A partnership with positive impact
In Spring 2022 we launched the Notre Dame-Durham University Seed Grant Program. We invited proposals from all disciplines, with particular interest in climate change, solar energy and tropical diseases. Six joint awards were made, five related to climate change and one in music theory.
In November 2022 our institutional MoU was renewed for a further five years and we look forward to continuing our successful partnership.
A globally connected University
Durham University is a globally outstanding centre of teaching and research excellence, a collegiate community of extraordinary people, a unique and historic setting – Durham is a university like no other. We work in partnership with research institutions around the world, to share and grow global knowledge. Visit our Study With Us and our World-wide Research and Partnerships pages to find out more about life at Durham.
