Why Latvia?

Abstract

By briefly looking at the geographic and cultural landscape of Latvia, the latter being the core of the nation throughout its history, this presentation will promote a positive awareness about Latvia in order to outline exchange opportunities for students and academic staff, as well as enhance the development of joint programmes and projects. The University of Latvia being one of the largest leading research universities in the Baltic States offers more than 130 state-accredited academic and professional study programmes in the humanities, sciences, social sciences, and education sciences. It is the only university representing Latvia in the QS World University Rankings and is among the 5% of the world’s top universities, which is a great achievement for a country with a population of less than 2 million. English studies all over the world are continuing to experience fundamental changes. Since English represents access to specific knowledge and skills nowadays, it serves for instrumental purposes rather than a goal per se. The presentation will share the experience of running the academic programme “English Philology” and the inter-disciplinary programme “Modern Language and Business Studies, which combines languages, cross-cultural and business perspectives. Although Portugal and Latvia are geographically remote countries, so far we have experienced fruitful cooperation with ISCAP, providing a strong foundation to further the appreciation of the economic and political environments and the understanding between the two cultures in the form of interinstitutional collaboration. Thus, this presentation will contribute to promoting the cooperation between the University of Latvia and ISCAP by sharing the present experience and outlining possible international collaboration in order to draw benefit from European processes in the area of education and research.