During the first week our Vice President and a delegation visited Mexico City, where Stockholm University has a well-functioning central agreement with Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) – a university with 350 000 students – in addition to having several particularly active partnerships at the departmental level. During the visit, closer contacts were made with their Institute of Latin American Studies. The delegation also visited Instituto Autonomo Technologico de Mexico (ITAM) a smaller university that cooperates with Stockholm Business School. A visit to Lima followed, where Stockholm University has no central agreements, but instead has some agreements with several universities at the departmental level, and where the delegation discussed opportunities for further cooperation.

President

Last Tuesday I joined the delegation along with some other colleagues and we continued on to Buenos Aires. One of our major goals was to meet with Universidad Nacional de Buenos Aires (UBA), a university which, with its 300 000 students, is ten times larger than Stockholm University. A former central agreement with them expired in 2012, but during the visit we signed a letter of intent for a new agreement. The next day we also met a visiting delegation from Uruguay, where the SARAS Institute works closely with the Stockholm Resilience Centre as well as with our Institute of Latin American Studies. Then we flew over the Andes to Santiago de Chile and met with three more Universities: Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile (PUCC) and Universidad de Chile, as well as Universidad de Concepcion, which cooperates with our Department of Education. From Santiago, we went on to Rio de Janeiro.

During this trip, there have been meetings with research financiers, with the universities’ international offices and with the Argentinian Ministry of Education. The Swedish embassies of every country have been extremely active and helpful, which is invaluable. In Mexico, a seminar on sustainable urban development in megacities was organized, and everywhere, the embassies have held well-attended receptions which included alumni and generated many promising contacts for future endeavors. These kind of personal connections are often indispensable for creating international exchanges.