The International University of Andalusia (UNIA), under the rectorate of Dr. Jorge Ignacio García Pérez, recently held the third edition of the Ibero-American Meetings in La Rábida, an academic initiative that continues to consolidate as one of the main spaces for university reflection in the Ibero-American context. On this occasion, the Ibero-American University Foundation (FUNIBER) and the Universidad Europea del Atlántico (European University of the Atlantic, UNEATLANTICO), represented by Dr. F. Álvaro Durántez Prados, director of the FUNIBER Chair, participated again in the conferences, reaffirming its commitment to the strengthening of the Ibero-American higher education area and to the articulation of international networks of knowledge, scientific cooperation, and academic innovation.
Under the title “Generation of Knowledge and Innovation in the Ibero-American Space for Higher Education”, the meeting brought together at the headquarters of La Rábida, in Huelva (Spain), rectors, researchers, specialists and institutional representatives from various countries, who discussed some of the main contemporary challenges facing universities in research, innovation and advanced training.
The third edition of this seminar placed special emphasis on issues related to models for promoting and managing university research, training researchers and doctoral programs, the impact of generative artificial intelligence in scientific production, policies to attract and retain academic talent, the internationalization of research, and women’s participation in science. Through lectures, round tables and sessions of collaborative work, the conferences favored an academic exchange aimed at promoting shared proposals and strategies for the development of the Ibero-American university.
Continued participation of UNEATLANTICO and FUNIBER in La Rábida
The presence of FUNIBER and UNEATLANTICO in this edition gives continuity to the participation of both institutions in the II Ibero-American Meeting of La Rábida, held in 2025 and then focused on Ibero-American university governance. That participation made it possible to strengthen academic and institutional ties with universities and higher education organizations from different countries in the region, in line with the international vocation of Ibero-America that characterizes both entities.
In this context, FUNIBER and UNEATLANTICO reaffirm their commitment to the consolidation of a knowledge space based on university cooperation, academic mobility and the articulation of international scientific networks. In this way, the aim is to promote higher levels of academic integration and intellectual cooperation between the universities of the Ibero-American Space, thereby strengthening the mechanisms for the circulation of knowledge and international projection of higher education in Spanish and Portuguese.
Institutional relations and academic linkages
The meeting also provided a valuable space for academic and institutional relations with prominent personalities from Ibero-American higher education. Among them, Dr. Fabiola León-Velarde Sevetto, renowned Peruvian researcher and rector of the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia; Dr. Lauren Müller de Pacheco, rector of the Fundación Universidad Privada de Santa Cruz de la Sierra (UPSA), a leading university institution in Bolivia; and Dr. Roberto Escalante Semerena, secretary general of the Union of Universities of Latin America and the Caribbean (UDUALC), widely recognized for his work in favor of regional university integration. Also, the Dr. Kitty Gaona Franco, rector of the Autonomous University of Asunción, an institution that maintains a close academic and institutional relationship with FUNIBER in Paraguay.
In this same framework of academic convergence, the University of Granada also participated, which has launched the program “Spanish as an international academic and scientific language: towards a strategy in the UGR“, aimed at strengthening the presence of our language in scientific production, knowledge transfer and contemporary technological developments. This perspective has parallels with initiatives such as the Alliance for Spanish, which highlights the strategic importance of the language as a language of science, higher education and international communication within the Ibero-American space, in which the FUNIBER Chair participates.
The celebration of this third edition of the Ibero-American Meeting of La Rábida confirms, in short, the growing relevance of consolidating university spaces aimed at strengthening academic cooperation, scientific innovation and the strategic articulation of knowledge in the Ibero-American context. In this context, the participation of FUNIBER and the European University of the Atlantic reaffirms the commitment of both institutions to building an increasingly integrated university community with international projection, capable of fostering sustainable dynamics of cooperation, innovation and circulation of knowledge from a shared cultural and linguistic base.