UNITA – Universitas Montium brings together the universities of Turin, Chambéry, Covilhã, Pau,
Timisoara, and Zaragoza, six comprehensive research universities with different sizes and trajectories
gathering more than 165 000 students and 13 000 staff members. As universities with a sound background
of experience in international networks and joint research, educational and innovation projects, we aspire
to shape a new model for an integrated European university. Together with actors from the socio-economic
sector, public authorities, policy-makers and civil organizations as associated partners, we will foster a
unique ecosystem with a powerful transformational potential on our universities and territories.
The name UNITA – almost the same as Italian unità (‘unity’) – evokes the strong links and commonalities
that bring us together to create a groundbreaking and innovative alliance aiming at a closer integration.
The subtitle Universitas Montium, written in Latin, reminds us that UNITA universities all speak Romance
languages and are deeply rooted in mountain territories.
OUR COMMONALITIES
The UNITA – Universitas Montium Alliance relies on three common key features:
our universities are located in rural and cross-border mountain regions across southern, central
and eastern Europe: Serra da Estrela (Beira Interior), the Pyrenees (Pau and Zaragoza), the Alps
(Savoie Mont Blanc and Turin), and the Banat Mountains (Timisoara), i.e. in ecosystems sharing
similar challenges;
we intend to use our Romance languages as common academic languages, thus transforming
them into a powerful tool for inclusion. Through the approach of inter-comprehension we will
empower students, teachers and staff to successfully interact in French, Italian, Portuguese,
Romanian or Spanish. International classrooms based on inter-comprehension between Romance
languages have an impressive outreach potential both on European (335 million Romance
language speakers) and on a global level (2 billion Romance language speakers in 2050).
we intend to develop strong links between learning and research, starting from three strategic areas
for the development of our regions, especially of their rural and mountain areas: Cultural heritage,
Renewable energies, and Circular economy, particularly Bioeconomy.
AN ALLIANCE BASED ON PARTICIPATION
From the very beginning, the UNITA – Universitas Montium project has been built through a participatory
method aiming to foster aggregation between the different actors: ideathons for students in the UNITA
universities (autumn 2019), UNITA administrative staff meeting 7-8 January 2020 in Brussels, UNITA
student and Rector meeting on 14-15 January 2020 in Turin, UNITA staff week on Inter-comprehension in
Turin (5-8 February 2020). Furthermore, Rectors and Vicerectors have met on a regular basis (physical
and virtual meetings) to co-design the project. In the pilot phase, UNITA will further develop this
participatory method through a multi-level, participative governance structure.
OUR VISION
The UNITA - Universitas Montium Alliance intends to build an inspiring European inter-university
campus based both on excellence in learning and teaching and on research and innovation for and with
the territories. Its goal is to drive excellence in the European Higher Education area and become attractive
for non-EU students also, in particular those from Romance-speaking countries.
UNITA students will experience a challenging multilingual and student-centred environment, closely
linked to research and entrepreneurship. They will be able to build flexible personalized curricula across
the universities of the Alliance based on increased mobility, physical and virtual, thanks to new tools and
new digital spaces.
The Alliance is firmly committed to supporting the development of the societies and territories in which it
is established, promoting joint pol