Final project event

The INSPIRE project, after 4 years of implementation, arrived towards its end. To celebrate the work of the Consortium over the project timeline, a final project event was scheduled for January 11th 2023.

Due to the security conditions in Iraq, the Italian Embassy in Baghdad discouraged the partners to travel to Iraq for the conference. Therefore, the event was perfomed online. The final meeting was organized as a broad event. to present the project, the latest activities completed, and above all to share considerations on the potential benefits that the Project leaves to the Iraqi education system. Given the broad scope of the meeting, the Partners were strongly encouraged to extend the invitation also to other participants, within their institutions or belonging to other Universities or organizations, especially in Iraq, potentially interested in learning about the INsPIRE results.

Despite the invitation to participate, none of the Iraqi Partners attended the INSPIRE final conference, due to the missing authorization on behalf of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Reseach in Baghdad, which refused to authorize the Iraqi colleagues to join the online event. Ultimately, the meeting was attended only by the European partners, with the only exception of Dr. Moafaq Samir, representative of the Ministry, who gave a short speech durng the institutional greetings.

The absence of all Iraqi colleagues (notified only the day before) implied a quick change in the Agenda, with the unfortunate consequence of cutting off all the speeches of the Iraqi colleagues, supposed to share their experiences on the project. Despite that, the final event was still hold with all WP leaders or co-leaders from European institutions presenting the outcomes of INSPIRE, the legacy of the project on the Iraqi Higher Education system, the sustainability of the project results. The INSPIRE External Evaluator was also invited to speak, and she shared a number of impressions and recommendations for the future of Iraqi universities. Finally, Professor Mussari, the project coordinator from the University of Siena, concluded the event by saying that, despite being the management of INsPIRE has been very hard due to all the challenging circumstances, he is proud of the results achieved.