The director of the Faculty of Education and Psychology of the Universidade Católica Portuguesa (FEP-UCP), Raquel Matos, visited to the United States for almost two weeks to strengthen partnerships in the field of international student mobility and to explore projects related to crime and gender.
The trip, which took place between 24 April and 3 May, included a visit to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) and a visit to John Jay College of Criminal Justice (New York).
At UMBC, Raquel Matos explored ways of leveraging bi-directional mobility between this North American institution and the FEP, to encourage exchanges between students and researchers.
The director of the Faculty of Education and Psychology met with various members of UMBC, including the coordinator of the degree programme in Psychology, the coordinators of the other Psychology and Educational Sciences courses, faculty in pedagogical innovation, and representatives from UMBC's International Office.
On the last day of her visit to the university, Raquel Matos gave a Distinguished Lecture in Psychology on the global growth of the prison population and gender and crime studies between 1973 and 2023.
Beyond the ERASMUS programme and intra-European mobility
The director of the FEP stresses the importance of this visit: "At our faculty, we try to go beyond what is most obvious and feasible for universities in Europe: the ERASMUS programme and the mobility of students and teachers within the European continent. Establishing partnerships with the North American context, which is very valuable in the field of education, allows us to offer our students and teachers the chance to get to know a university organisation that is different from the European one".
After her visit to UMBC, Raquel Matos travelled to the John Jay College of Criminal Justice at the City University of New York, a renowned school in the field of criminology. There, she learned more about Rosemary Barberet's research on crime and gender, topics that the UCP professor also studies. "I hope that this contact will lead to joint projects in these areas in the future," she says.
The strategic trip to the United States reinforced the FEP's commitment to internationalisation and opened new horizons for the international mobility of students, faculty and researchers.
