Jón Atli Benediktsson, rector of the University of Iceland, and Chik Collins, rector of the University of the Faeroe Islands, extended the universities’ academic agreement for the next five years earlier this week. The agreement covers both student and staff exchanges as well as collaboration in research and conferences.
It succeeds the former agreement from 2016 and its appendixes as the decade long collaboration between the two universities has become more extensive with a stronger global standing.
The universities' collaboration has been supervised by joint committees established in the early nineties in respective universities. A so-called Faeroe Island committee with six representatives; one from each University school and a chair, is responsible for the collaboration here at the University of Iceland. The Icelandic committee in the Faeroe Islands also comprises representatives from their faculties. Committee members are responsible for putting forward suggestions for collaborative projects in teaching and research for funding, and seek new opportunities for collaboration. When the collaboration was launched it was mainly in humanities, however, it has become much more extensive in recent years and currently covers all university fields.
The two cooperation committees are furthermore in charge of organising of the conference Frændafundur; held for the 11th time at the University of Iceland earlier this week. The conference was the largest one yet with contributions from all of the five University schools. This gathering has hitherto been held every third year, but to mark the increased collaboration between the two universities it will be biannual from now on.
The agreement also stipulates student and staff exchanges and both universities agree to do their best to ensure that visiting students and academics coming from one institution to the other receive second language instruction that is appropriate for their level of proficiency in Icelandic or Faroese, respectively.