University of Exeter and University of Madrid welcome new student exchange programme

The programme, which begins this September, was set up following long-standing partnerships between academics at the two institutions, who collaborate on joint research projects.

Two Complutense students will spend time at the University of Exeter’s Department of Modern Languages with staff at the Centre for Hispanic Studies. Two University of Exeter Hispanic Studies students will spend time at the Complutense’s Department of Hispanic Literatures.

There will also be a staff exchange programme, which will begin this year with the visit of Dr Jesús Cano Reyes, a specialist in contemporary Latin American literature, who will be hosted at Exeter by Dr Katie Brown, Senior Lecturer in Latin American Studies.

Professor Santiago López-Ríos Moreno, Associate Dean for Internationalisation, Department of Hispanic Literatures, and Professor of Medieval Spanish at the Complutense, Madrid, said: “This new Erasmus agreement between our departments of Literature and Modern Languages will bring an exciting new opportunity for our students to study with our colleagues and friends at Exeter, and for Exeter's students to learn alongside us.

“This new agreement to exchange undergraduate students - with plans for co-supervision at Masters and PhD levels to follow - brings a welcome education-focussed dimension to the longstanding research collaborations between colleagues in Madrid and Exeter. In my own field of Medieval Studies, the work of the late Simon Barton and Keith Whinnom, for example, has been particularly influential.

“Today colleagues from both institutions work together on a number of research and impact projects. This includes those specialising in Latin American Studies such as the Complutense's Cano and Exeter's Brown, as well as gender studies such as María Jesús Fraga, Cristina Oñoro and Capdevila-Argüelles, and academics specialising in film - Fernando Ramos, José Luis Sánchez Noriega and Sally Faulkner.”

Professor Sally Faulkner, University of Exeter Assistant Deputy Vice Chancellor (Europe) and Professor of Hispanic Studies and Film Studies, said: “This new agreement offers an excellent opportunity for our students to study with leading specialists in one of the top universities for Humanities in Europe.

“Bringing Erasmus students to our own campuses to study alongside Exeter students enriches our own teaching as well as our students' learning here.”

Dr Jon Bradbury, Programme Director, Hispanic Studies, and Senior Lecturer in Hispanic Studies at the University of Exeter, said: “We are delighted to add an educational dimension to the strong research collaborations that already exist between Exeter and the Complutense. This includes the important series of co-edited work published by Dr Fraga and Professor Capdevila-Argüelles on women's twentieth-century writing.”

Exeter's students will have the opportunity to enter into a prize for the best study abroad student when they are in Madrid.

The University of Exeter has participated in the Erasmus programme, which offers means-tested maintenance grants to students, since its inception in 1989. This new agreement joins a wide and longstanding portfolio of strong Erasmus partnerships between the Department of Modern Languages & Cultures and Universities across Europe, and the University of Exeter as a whole enjoys critical education and research links with European partners.