On July 11, WHU and Durham University held a virtual signing ceremony to renew their inter-university cooperation agreement, undergraduate exchange agreement and doctoral student exchange agreement, with a view to continuing comprehensive and substantive cooperation. WHU’s President Dou Xiankang and Vice President Tang Qizhu and Durham University’s Vice-Chancellor Karen O’Brien attended the meeting.

Virtual signing ceremony between Durham University and Wuhan University

At the ceremony, President Dou Xiankang gave a brief introduction to the comprehensive strength and first-rate disciplines of WHU, highlighting the efforts made by WHU in promoting the internationalization of higher education and cultivating talents with a global vision to benchmark with first-class universities. He indicated that Wuhan University attached great importance to the exchange with the UK and the cooperation between WHU and Durham University was flourishing. He expected both sides to take advantage of their respective discipline strengths to explore collaboration in carbon neutrality, digital humanities, environmental sciences and archaeology, making new contributions to the international development of the two universities and educational people exchanges between China and the UK.

Dou Xiankang, President of WHU at the ceremony.

Karen O’Brien reviewed the cooperation between WHU and Durham over recent years and noted the renewal of agreements as the continuation of friendship between the two universities. She pointed out that Durham University was committed to cultivating students with a global vision. She expected that more faculty, students and researchers would benefit from the partnership, and explore common problems facing humankind together through further cooperation with WHU across space-time and culture.

Vice-Chancellor Karen O’ Brien attending the ceremony through video conferencing

In the discussion session afterwards, Tang Qizhu, vice president of WHU, expressed his expectation for cooperation between the two universities in Sino-foreign cooperative education and joint scientific research. He said that collaboration in the sciences would contribute to cooperation between the two universities at a higher level.

Tang Qizhu, vice president of WHU, delivering his speech at the ceremony

Dou Xiankang and Karen O’ Brien signed the Agreement on Cultural, Educational and Research Cooperation between Wuhan University and Durham University, the Agreement on Undergraduate Exchange between Wuhan University and Durham University and the Agreement on Postgraduate Exchange between Wuhan University and Durham University. The ceremony was presided over by Li Xiaoshu, Director of the Office of International Affairs of WHU.

Agreement signing by President Dou and Vice-Chancellor Karen O’ Brien

Founded in 1832, Durham University is a collegiate university of world-class and leading status in the UK. It blends the ancient traditions of the university with modern values and is committed to the highest academic reputation and research accomplishments. Durham University is ranked 82nd in the 2022 QS rankings, with 12 of its disciplines ranked in the top 50 globally. Wuhan University and Durham University formally established their cooperation in 2018, launching an undergraduate exchange and PhD exchange program and pioneered a 3+1+1 undergraduate program in law, science and engineering in 2021. The renewed undergraduate and doctoral student exchange agreements between the two universities will promote student exchanges at different levels, laying a foundation for cooperation in more fields.

Photos by Cao Haigang, Li Yueqi

Rewritten by Zhang Jing

Edited by Sylvia, Xi Bingqing