Prof. Riku-Matti Kinnunen, International Coordinator for Engineering, Technology and Natural Resources, visited Universidad Francisco de Vitoria. He met with the international staff, together with Olga Peñalba, Dean of the Polytechnic School, and Eduardo Pilo, International Coordinator for Engineering of Industrial Systems Degree. They had the opportunity to discuss future projects. Prof. Kinnunen invited his colleagues to participate in the International Week for Engineering, which will be held in Tampere next month of February.

As part of the attempts to further internationalize the activities of THUAS, Paul Nixon of Strategic Partnerships led a visit to MUNI. In the party were the following people from Faculties: B. van Gool and M.Olivier Grosso of Safety and Security Management (BRV), K. Caliskan and B. Reitbergen of Faculty Support (BFM), D. Colijn Policy Advisor (HRM), G. van Hengel European Studies (M&O), J. Trouw Mobility Office (M&O), G.Neelen and A.Pearce International Public Management (BRV). The party was hosted by J. Pavlik, Head of the Office of Intnal. Cooperation, Delegates met with a range of people from different Faculties and Service Depts. and had meetings with Vice-Rector for Legal and Policy Affairs, R.Polčák, and Vice-Rector for Internationalization, B.Dančák. They enjoyed fruitful discussions with their colleagues from Brno. We expect there to be increased staff/student exchange activity between all the areas that were represented on the visit, as well as potential academic inputs relating to the three degree programmes represented.

The 31st annual EAIE Conference and Exhibition took place in Helsinki, from 24–27 September 2019. It was the largest conference to date with 6.200 higher education professional from 95 countries. The attending members of the network took the opportunity to hold a brief meeting with lunch, thanks to TAMK arrangements. This meeting allowed the members to investigate the range of diverse opportunities on offer at TAMK, as well as providing a chance for us all to catch up. Many of us also attended the TAMK reception which was again a great way to engage with a wide range of TAMK staff who had taken the trouble to come to meet us.

THUAS held a workshop with Finance & Control partner universities Tampere University of Applied Sciences and Universidad Francisco de Vitoria. The workshop was held to plan the Erasmus+ Knowledge Alliance project between IFMC and the two partners.

Dr S. Menéndez and P. Nixon visited UoD to discuss research potential between the two institutions. They met with representatives of a number of Faculties and both institutions presented their research agendas around the issues of general interest Education. Again it was felt that there was a great deal of synergy and that there were great opportunities to work together and to work towards EU funding bids for joint research, as well as exploring the feasibility of staff exchanges. A reciprocal visit was planned from Derby.