Fundacio per a la Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

The academic partner in Spain is The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (UOC) was funded in 1994 to foster Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) opportunities for higher education. It is an innovative web-centric virtual organisation which was born thanks to ICT and whose main goal is that every person satisfies their training and education needs, making their effort as profitable as possible, regardless of where they are and optimising their time. The UOC develops the Virtual Campus as a University community where limitations of space and time are overcome. It also uses an educational methodology based on the complete personalisation and guidance of the student. Students, faculty and staff interact and cooperate in the community to create, to structure, share and disseminate knowledge. The UOC has a top quality team of professionals that provide all the necessary higher education services to more than 45000 students. The UOC is a cross-cutting Catalan university with a worldwide presence, aware of the diversity of its environment and committed to the capacity of education and culture to effect social change. The UOC fosters cooperation and exchange within its university community and with other universities, institutions, the business community and civil society, whilst at the same time forging international alliances to enable sharing and learning. Fundamental, application-oriented and applied research is conducted within the domain of ‘Food Systems, Culture and Society’ at UOC. The research, essentially carried out by faculty, currently focuses on the areas of the arts and humanities; social sciences; health sciences (where or Department is located); technology and communication: identity, culture, art and society; technology and social action; globalization, legal pluralism and human rights; taxation, labor relations and social benefits; internet, digital technologies and new media; information and communication systems and services, and information and communication management. There are two particularly important areas in the University’s scientific activity: the Information and Knowledge Society, and e-learning. All this activity is channeled through the two research institutes: the Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3) and the eLearn Center (eLC). The IN3, as a research institute, focuses its activity on the interdisciplinary field of the Information and Knowledge Society and provides support to a total of eleven research groups and seven research programmes. The eLC is an e-learning research, innovation and training centre focusing on higher education and lifelong learning. Alongside the individual members, there are a total of ten research and innovation groups, made up of faculty and management staff, carrying out research activities. The centre currently has around a hundred and fifteen members. The Department of Food Systems, Culture and Society has wide experience in research on food from a social and cultural perspective, focusing on both local and global food supply systems in a broad international context. Research on local and authentic food systems in different contexts (including global aspects, human movements –tourism, migrations- and transnational dishes) and from a transdisciplinar perspective is a primary focus of the research of the department, which is also fields of attention in the fore lying project.

Read more about The Universitat Oberta de Catalunya here: www.uoc.edu (external link).