The Dean of IE School of Arts and Humanities, Arantza de Areilza, recently participated in the “Founding Conference for ECHIC” hosted by the Trinity College in Dublin.

A university-based initiative, ECHIC is developed to organize the European Research Institutes and Centers for the Humanities.  The new consortium aims to shape the debate about the importance of humanities in Europe’s global and technology-driven environment and offer solutions for renewal of the field.

“It was an honor to take part in the ECHIC founding conference and paramount discussion of the humanities’ social and political relevance in Europe today,” said Arantza de Areilza. “The humanities are at the heart of IE’s offerings, from the undergraduate to postgraduate programs, and this new consortium resonates with the School of Arts and Humanities aim to apply IE’s core values of innovation and entrepreneurship to the rich field of arts and humanities.”

The newly founded consortium aims to:

• represent members in dialogues with ESF, EU, and other funding and policy-making bodies and canvass the need for humanities research and develop a language for humanities institutes in European universities;
• organize an annual humanities conference at a member institution that involves main partners, including funding and policy-making bodies; and
• establish a network to lobby for the humanities in Europe, prepare collaborative projects and activities, and create a networking system with other related international networks.

In addition to IE School of Arts and Humanities, members of ECHIC are: Centre for the Humanities at Utrecht University; Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität); Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies; Istituto Italiano di Scienze Umane (Fondazione SUM) in Firenze; Trinity Long Room Hub (Trinity College Dublin); Université Paris-Diderot (Paris 7); Birkbeck Institute for the Humanities in London, Centre for Advanced Studies of The University of Nottingham in UK; Centre for Law and the Humanities of Birkbeck College London; the University of Cambridge’s Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities; Ljubljana Institute for the Humanities, School of Advanced Studies of University of London; School of English at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece; Scuola Superiore di Studi  Umanistici in Bologna; The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at The University of Edinburgh; and University College London.

About IE School of Arts and Humanities

IE School of Arts and Humanities offers humanities courses to all the undergraduate and graduate programs at IE in English and Spanish taught by national and international faculty members from the world’s leading schools.  The programs include a substantial online component and focus on the international, practical, humanistic angles of highly current issues.  Students investigate the humanities as the application of culture to an improved understanding of the world, and thus learn to analyze both broadly and in-depth, to think critically and to identify the essential from the trivial, to carry out empirical reasoning, to express themselves, and to connect ideas in a creative manner.  All programs share the common purpose of encouraging imagination and developing humanistic values, aesthetic perception, and critical reasoning.