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"Strengthening and developing our international partnerships"

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Until October 10th 2024, a University of Bordeaux delegation is carrying out an official visit to Japan, where the institution boasts a number of long-standing partners. On this occasion, Laurent Servant, Vice-President for international networks, and François-Xavier Mortreuil, Director of the International Office, discuss the University of Bordeaux's strategy for international collaboration.

Photo : Kyoto University, Japan © Kyoto University
Kyoto University, Japan © Kyoto University

Some Japanese universities are long-standing partners of the University of Bordeaux. What are the objectives of this visit?

Laurent Servant: Our aim is to reaffirm the University of Bordeaux's position as a major stakeholder in Franco-Japanese academic and scientific relations. This is being achieved at several levels. During this visit, our President Dean Lewis will be taking part in the STS Forum in Kyoto (Science and Technology in Society Forum), a sort of ‘Davos’ for science, bringing together the world's leaders in science and technology to discuss the major issues and challenges facing science and technology as they ‘permeate’ society. By attending, we hope to showcase our university's identity and strengths to leading figures from academia, industry and international civil society.
We will also be taking part in the event organised by the CNRS in Tokyo to celebrate the 50th anniversary of its collaboration with Japan. Our President has been invited to take part in a round table discussion and will have the opportunity to review our joint activities with Japan, present the University of Bordeaux's vision and consider new perspectives.

François-Xavier Mortreuil: The University of Bordeaux is the 4th French university partner in Japan, just behind Paris Saclay, Paris Cité and Sorbonne Université. We collaborate more specifically with the universities of Kyoto, Tokyo and Tsukuba, with which we share two double degrees.
Our scientific collaboration is of a very high level, particularly through our involvement in International Joint Laboratories and CNRS projects, and we would like to further develop student and doctoral mobility.
Japan's often prestigious universities offer only a few places to their international academic partners. This visit is an opportunity to meet the presidents of various Japanese universities and raise their awareness of this important issue. We will also be taking advantage of our presence to strengthen links with our partners, a sine qua non for developing new exchange and collaboration agreements.

The University of Bordeaux has a large number of partner universities around the world. What strategy has been put in place to maintain and develop these partnerships?

François-Xavier Mortreuil: The University of Bordeaux is a member of the European University alliance ENLIGHT, within which it benefits from privileged connections. We also have around 240 partners throughout the world, with whom we are developing a wide range of collaborations. Seven of these partners, in Europe, Japan, Canada and the USA, are classified as strategic as we are developing medium- and long-term projects together.

Laurent Servant: The University of Bordeaux has just celebrated its 10th anniversary: it has succeeded in developing numerous partnerships with international academic institutions, trying to combine, as often as possible, research/innovation and training aspects in order to ensure their durability. Often, international collaborations begin with individual contacts, and our role is to ‘elevate’ them to an institutional level, so that they evolve and benefit all of our communities by reaching a critical size that enables us to envisage high-impact multidisciplinary actions.
The international environment is highly competitive: it's important to remain alert to possible new partnerships with a high potential impact, particularly with institutions in the Global South, Brazil, India and Africa. Universities are competing with each other to establish collaborations and to try to offer their students mobility opportunities that correspond with their projects and will promote their subsequent professional integration. We need to use all our levers and assets to raise the profile of the University of Bordeaux and convince our future partners to work with us.
For all these reasons, it's important to travel to our partners, organise visits and meet the heads of the universities and research centres to ‘embody’ the partnerships we want to create.

François-Xavier Mortreuil: In order to assert our presence on an international scale, we must diversify our collaborations to have a greater impact. We want to build new, well-balanced partnerships with strong potential, enabling us to envisage the mobility of our student, teaching and staff communities, as well as the potential creation of new joint degrees, joint theses and scientific projects. To attract new international students and researchers from these partner institutions, we first need to introduce them to the University of Bordeaux and highlight our strengths, namely the excellence of our research and the multidisciplinary nature of our teaching offer, our living environment, our campuses... not forgetting the existence of the Welcome Centre for International Researchers, a structure that is quite unique in France and much appreciated by foreign scientists.

Laurent Servant © Arthur Pequin

The international environment is highly competitive: it's important to remain alert to possible new partnerships with a high potential impact, particularly with institutions in the Global South, Brazil, India and Africa.

Laurent Servant, University of Bordeaux Vice-President for international networks

What are the next steps?

François-Xavier Mortreuil: Today, we need to have a clearer picture of the state of our partnerships: why we are building them, for what purpose, for which communities. We are in the process of mapping out all our international collaborations. We will then ‘qualify’ each partner, those that are key and strategic and those that could become so. This study will help us to examine how we can increase the impact of our international activities.
It's a long-term project, but an essential one.

Laurent Servant : In practice, we are planning, for example, to have a greater presence at international fairs in the short term. Participating actively in this type of event will enable us to meet key players, whether they be potential partner institutions or students. We need to raise awareness of the University of Bordeaux, its strengths and its values, to be visible and appealing.