The Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) is a generalist campus-based University, hosting an overall amount of 42.840 students (2015-16). Among them are graduate, postgraduate, master and doctorate students. The UAB plays a worldwide leading role in scientific research and its wide range of disciplines, in both education and research, indicates its multidisciplinary approach.

The UAB holds a leading position in the most prestigious and influential international university rankings and, in recent years, this award has been complemented by the growing impact of the research, the constant improvement of the quality of teaching and the ability to attract international talent to the university. This progress has been decisive in moving upward to leading positions in different rankings: UAB is the second-ranked university in Spain according to the QS Ranking 2016/2017 and located at position 203 in the world ranking (and 89 in Europe) of the 500 World's Best universities. The UAB's commitment to internationalisation is reflected in its agreements with universities from all over the world, which aim is to facilitate exchanges and joint projects for students and researchers.

The university, according to its internationalisation strategy has recently created the International Projects Office that brings specialised support to the researchers in the preparation, implementation and economic justification of projects. In the field of research, the UAB has so far been a partner in 168 projects of the 7FP, acting as the coordinator for 16 of them and received more than 44 million Euros of funding.

The UAB is currently hosting 9 outstanding projects funded by the European Research Council (ERC Starting and Advance Grants) and, regarding the Marie Curie Action, it is the first Spanish university in number of projects and has already hosted 33 Marie Curie fellows. UAB has participated in more than 114 International research projects outside the 7FP (DG EAC projects, LIFE, CORES, ESF, ESA, NATO etc).

Regarding Erasmus+ projects, the UAB coordinates an Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree (GLOBED), a Capacity Building project in the Field of Higher Education (ORACLE), five Strategic Partnerships and for the period 2014-16 has participated, as a partner, in 30 Erasmus+ projects.

The UAB has a very long experience in the field of sustainability and sustainable tourism. In the more general field of sustainability, UAB stands out for being the first university in Spain that implemented the Environmental Sciences Degree (1992), with a very deep sustainability approach as a transversal concept. This led to the creation of the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA – UAB), one of the reference centres in sustainability science in Europe. More specifically, sustainable tourism has been approached through the research developed by the ICTA – UAB itself, but also by the research carried out by the Geography Department and the School of Tourism, among other departments and institutes at the university level. Several research projects have led to many publications on this topic by UAB professors and researchers.

In addition, the UAB has a long list of connections with different stakeholders. In the case of tourism, it has collaborated with many enterprises through different projects and agreements for working placement and internships for the students (particularly those in the School of Tourism). Thus, the UAB is well poised to access a wide network of several hundreds of tourism enterprises, from large to micro and small enterprises, most of them located in the region, but also in the rest of the country and in other European countries.

 

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