Internationalisation Effects
INTERNATIONALISATION EFFECTS: LEARNING PROCESS
Students of the Faculty of Law and Administration, during the course of their studies, take foreign legal language classes - it takes the specificity of the field of study into account. Language courses end with a B2+ examination in line with the European description of language education system. Classes are taught by qualified speakers from the UG Foreign Languages Centre.
The Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Gdańsk conducts regular English-language classes – offering 16 lectures in almost all fields of law - also for foreign students pursuing their mobility in the field of legal sciences under the Erasmus+ scholarship.
For many years, the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Gdańsk has been working to internationalise the Polish legal thought, in particular, the scientific and research achievements of its staff, which also has an important impact on the process of student education. Students receive educational and scientific assistance - the opportunity to use English-language monographs on the specific issues of Polish law, its history, theory, and philosophy, and to learn about international and European law from a Polish perspective. So far, Faculty members have published eleven stand-alone monographs and 11 collective monographs in English, as well as one collective monograph in Russian. In order to give students the most effective access to the content of these monographs, most of them are also made available in an electronic form.
As part of the internationalisation of the education process at the Faculty, we have also created an English-language publishing series "Law: the Basic Concepts" in which Faculty academics present basic concepts related to the three main perspectives of the legal sciences: dogmatic, historical, and theoretical-philosophical. To date, seven books have been published: An Outline of English Commercial Law, General History of the State and of Law, Constitutional Law, Environmental Law, Financial Law, Philosophy of Law. All monographs within the "Law: the Basic Concepts" publishing series are published in cooperation with the prestigious international Wolters Kluwer publishing house and Gdansk University Press. This publishing initiative is undoubtedly unique on a national and international scale.
https://wyd.ug.edu.pl/taxonomy/term/38761
Polish financial law
https://wyd.ug.edu.pl/oferta_wydawnictwa/90329/polish_financial_law
An Outline of Polish Commercial Law
https://wyd.ug.edu.pl/oferta_wydawnictwa/86970/outline_polish_commercial_law
General History of the State and of Law
https://wyd.ug.edu.pl/oferta_wydawnictwa/80972/general_history_state_and_law
Constitutional Law
https://wyd.ug.edu.pl/oferta_wydawnictwa/72847/constitutional_law
Environmental Law
https://wyd.ug.edu.pl/oferta_wydawnictwa/61103/environmental_law
Financial Law
https://wyd.ug.edu.pl/oferta_wydawnictwa/60054/financial_law
Philosophy of Law
https://wyd.ug.edu.pl/oferta_wydawnictwa/58190/philosophy_law
The Faculty operates 6 FOREIGN LAW SCHOOLS in cooperation with recognised university centres: British Law School (University of Cambridge, Faculty of Law), American Law School (Chicago-Kent College of Law), German Law School (Universität zu Köln Université), French Law School (Toulouse 1 Capitole), Chinese Law School (Ocean University of China Law School), Russian Law School (Saratov State University) giving students a unique opportunity to learn about other cultures and legal systems. Classes in these international research projects are taught by Faculty staff, foreign visitors, guest professors and legal practitioners. The schools also organise lectures open to all students and staff at the UG Faculty of Law and Administration.
https://en.prawo.ug.edu.pl/admissions_0/foreign_law_schools
As part of the internationalisation of the education process in the field of law, the Faculty promotes and supports the participation of students in international competitions, which is the subject of teaching projects funded by the UG Didactic Innovation Fund and the UG Faculty of Law and Administration funds;
As part of the internationalisation of UG's education and promotion process, the Faculty has become the site of the International Moot Court for high school students, featuring teams from twelve countries around the world in 2020.
From 12-19 April 2019, a team representing the Faculty of Law and the University of Gdańsk (UG Vis Team) participated in the 26th Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot in Vienna. The Willem C. Vis International Commercial Arbitration Moot is one of the most prestigious competitions for law students in the world. The competition allows students to learn about international trade arbitration and the Vienna Convention on the international sale of goods, and gain valuable practical skills such as preparing procedural papers and public speeches. Through participation in the competition, students can meet their peers from all over the world, make their first professional contacts, and gain experience that will shape their entire future career.
Organised by the Justice Resource Centre of New York City, Gdynia City Hall, European Solidarity Centre, the International Moot Court Competition took place from 26 January to 1 February 2020 in Tricity, including at the UG Faculty of Law and Administration. High school students from all over the world took part in the competition (18 teams, from Poland, the US, Russia, South Africa, Venezuela, Argentina, Mongolia, the Netherlands, Romania and others). The competition consisted of a simulation of a hearing at the Court of Justice in The Hague, where judges of the court and professors of the Faculty of Law of the University of Gdańsk played the roles of judges. In addition to the University of Gdańsk, the partners of the event were also the University of Business and Administration, the Pomeranian Bar Association, the Chamber of Attorneys-at-Law, the District Court in Gdańsk.
The increasing quality of English education and the offer tailored to the needs of foreign students results in a systematic increase in the number of law students pursuing foreign mobility, e.g. as part of the Erasmus+ programme. The Faculty expands the Erasmus+ student mobility area every year. The ERASMUS+ 2018/2019 programme included 34 interinstitutional agreements with universities from 15 countries, the 2019/2020 programme included 37 agreements with universities from 15 countries. In the last academic year of the current ERASMUS programme (2020/21), our Faculty will be bound by 42 bilateral and 5 multilateral agreements under the "SEA-EU European University of the Seas" consortium.
Within the framework of Erasmus + KA107, the Faculty of Law and Administration has concluded agreements on the implementation of academic and student mobility in the 2019/2020 academic year with 23 partner universities from 11 countries. As part of Erasmus + KA107 for the 2020/2021 and 2021/2022 academic year, the Faculty of Law and Administration has applied for student and academic mobility with 27 partner universities from 16 countries.
The Erasmus+ programme also supports the arrival of foreign students at the Faculty: the number of foreign Erasmus+ students studying at the UG Faculty of Law and Administration has shown an increasing trend in recent years. The growing interest in the implementation of mobility at the Faculty for international students is linked to the diverse and stable range of subjects taught in English by experienced lecturers, often also actively participating in Erasmus+ teaching mobility trips.
An excellent experience in increasing the degree of internationalisation of the legal education process is the implementation of the project of joint international supervision of doctoral dissertations under the Agreement Regarding the Joint Supervision of PhD Dissertations between the UG and the University of Pisa, which results in the dual degree of Doctor of Legal Sciences in Poland and Italy.
The Faculty proved to excel in the area of academic cooperation and staff exchange winning a grant from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the project titled: Polish-Czech Academic Forum: an Effective Model of Cross-Border Business Cooperation and Partnership (deadline for public task: from 1 Sept 2019 until 31 Dec 2019) where the priority was Polish-Czech youth cooperation – building lasting partnerships and model solutions. The partner of the UG Faculty of Law and Administration is the Masaryk University (Brno, Czech Republic). Activities covered by the project include the organisation of two scientific seminars (in Gdańsk and Brno) with the participation of Polish and Czech academic youth and the creation and moderation of a Polish-Czech e-learning and discussion forum for Polish and Czech students on the UG educational portal on the legal conditions of cross-border business and partnership cooperation.
INTERNATIONALISATION EFFECTS: EXCHANGE OF SCIENTIFIC STAFF
Erasmus+ Teaching Staff Mobility is a very important part of the policy of internationalisation of the Faculty learning process. In recent years, such intensive exchanges have been carried out with the universities of Alba Iulia, Bratislava, Brno (Masaryk University), Budapest (ELTE and Nemzeti Kozszolgalati Egyetem), Düsseldorf, Cádiz, Ljubljana, Pisa, Santiago de Compostela, Toulouse and others. The Erasmus + framework also includes the arrival of foreign academic staff. All incoming lecturers carry out their classes (lectures) in English in an open form.
In addition to the Eramsus+ agreements, the Faculty cooperates with various universities around the world on the basis of bilateral agreements, e.g.: Universidad Nacional Tres de Febrero in Argentina, Law Faculty at the Toulouse 1 University Capitole in France, Batumi Shota Rustaveli State University in Georgia, Caspian Social University in Kazakhstan, Turan University in Kazakhstan, Tashkent University of Law in Uzbekistan, University of Cologne in Germany, Omsk State University and Siberian Federal University in Russia, Novosibirsk State University in Russia, Financial University in Russia, Masaryk University in the Czech Republic, University of Pitesti in Romania, Ocean University of China Law School in China.
The mobility of research and teaching staff from countries outside the European Union is more and more intensively carried out at the Faculty under Erasmus+ and bilateral agreements on international cooperation and exchange of academic staff with 27 partner universities from the following countries: Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Australia, Japan, Barbados, Georgia, India, the United States, China, Kenya, South Africa, Thailand, Indonesia.
INTERNATIONALISATION EFFECTS: IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF EDUCATION
The international exchange of academic staff is crucial for the internationalisation of the learning process: incoming lecturers carry out their classes (lectures) in English in an open form.
The momentous effect of internationalising and improving the quality of law education is the series of prestigious legal scientific conferences organised at the Faculty. Among those held in recent years are:
Two international conferences on the protection of cultural heritage held at the UG Faculty of Law and Administration on 6-7 June 2019 thanks to the close cooperation of UNIDROIT (the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law is an international intergovernmental organisation based in Rome dedicated to the study of needs and methods of improving, harmonising and coordinating private and commercial law), the University of Gdańsk and the University of Opole (UNESCO Chair on Cultural Property Law). The conferences were held under the honorary patronage of the Deputy Minister of Culture and National Heritage - General Conservator of Monuments and the Polish National Commission for UNESCO. The first focused on the issues of the 1995 UNIDROIT Convention on Stolen or Illegally Exported Cultural Objects, while the second was part of the UNIDROIT Working Group for 2017-2019 entitled "Private Art Collections"
The 2019 Global Law Deans' Forum and the annual conference of the International Association of Law Schools.
The 2019 Global Law Deans' Forum and the annual conference of the International Association of Law Schools, of which our Faculty is a member, were held at the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Gdańsk on 19-22 September 2019. During the five days of the event, the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Gdańsk hosted the deans and representatives of more than one hundred universities from almost thirty countries. During the Global Law Dean's Forum, the deans of law faculties discussed strategic visions and standards for global law education and discussed issues related to the role of universities and the judiciary in shaping legal attitudes. Immediately after this event, guests attended the IALS (2019 Annual Meeting) and discussed the problems of law teaching methodology, selected issues concerning particular areas of law, as well as the issues of the interaction of law with business, culture, and new technologies. Entrusting the organisation of this event to the Faculty of Law and Administration of the University of Gdańsk confirms the growing role of Polish law science in the field of legal education and the high position of our Faculty as one of the outstanding law schools in our part of Europe. For the first time in its long history, the Forum was held in Poland. The UG Faculty of Law and Administration, as well as Gdynia, Gdańsk, and Sopot joined the host university and city group including Doha, San Francisco, Buenos Aires, Milan, Madrid, Singapore, Canberra or Montreal.
https://www.ialsnet.org/annualmeeting/2019-annual-meeting/
Joint international research projects with public institutions and recognised research centres are also an important element of the internationalisation of the Faculty. In particular, the currently implemented Interreg South Baltic – SEAPLANSPACE – Marine spatial planning instruments for sustainable marine governance (EUR 1,684,656.95) to improve the skills and practical knowledge of managing the marine space as well as the European Commission-funded JUSTICE Programme: „TRIIAL - TRust, Independence, Impartiality, and Accountability of judges and arbitrators under the EU Charter”, led by the European University Institute (EUI), Italy.
https://seaplanspace.ug.edu.pl
Other significant projects are carried out at the Faculty under the Horizon 2020 framework, the WorkYP (Working and Yet Poor) project, focusing on those groups of people who remain on the labour market, whose level of pay and other working conditions do not guarantee an adequate standard of living, is being implemented by a consortium coordinated by the University of Luxembourg.
The second project under Horizon 2020 is RECONNECT (Reconciling Europe with its Citizens through Democracy and Rule of Law). The project is being carried out by an international consortium of 18 leading European universities, led by Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Thanks to a unique multidisciplinary consortium of researchers, the project examines the existential challenges facing EU power and legitimacy through a comprehensive analysis of the principles, practices, and perceptions of democracy and the rule of law in the EU.
https://reconnect-europe.eu
As a maritime research centre, the Faculty of Law and Administration also participates in the European University of the Seas (SEA-EU) initiative and carries out nationally unique research on maritime law. It is an international programme of the European Commission encouraging the building of alliances of European universities. European universities will be supranational alliances of higher education institutions across the EU with a common long-term strategy and will promote European values and identity. The University of Gdańsk was among 17 consortia of European universities selected in the European Commission competition "European Universities." The total budget of the programme is 85 million euro. The grant is dedicated to developing cooperation, e.g. in the field of education, research, and academic exchange. The SEA-EU consortium, alongside the University of Gdańsk, consists of: Universidad de Cádiz (Cádiz, Spain) – leader; Sveučilište u Split (Split, Croatia); Université de Bretagne Occidentale (Brest, France); Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (Kiel, Germany); L-Università ta' Malta (Valetta, Malta).
https://en.prawo.ug.edu.pl/internationalisation/sea-eu_european_university_seas
The strategic objective of the Faculty is to effectively apply for international cooperation grants offered by NAWA: the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange in the area of academic staff exchange and modern academic promotion, applying under the PROM programme and Foreign Promotion. The aim of the PROM - International Scholarship Exchange for PhD Students and Academic Staff is to improve the competences of PhD students and academic staff from Poland and abroad, including those from outside the EU, through international scholarship exchange. During the 2018/2019 edition, 1 law researcher and 5 PhD students in the field of law benefited from the programme. Selected host institutions included: University of Cambridge Library, Squire Law Library, the British Library, Institute of Advanced Legal Studies Library (IALS Library), Queen Mary University of London Library (QMUL Library), Université de Genève, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, the European Court of Justice. In the 2019/20 academic year, the University of Gdańsk (including the Faculty of Law and Administration) has again received funding under the PROM programme - 4 academic teachers and 6 PhD students will travel in this edition, while the Faculty will host 11 PhD students (10 from Russia and 1 from Kyrgyzstan) for internships. The institutions hosting teachers and PhD students from the Faculty are: Victoria University (Australia), Istanbul Bigli University (Turkey), Biblioteca de Nacional de Espana (Spain), International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (Italy), Vatican Library (Italy), University of Giessen (Germany), University College London (England), Council of the European Union Central Library (Belgium) and the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg (France).
