An Najah National University, Master in Clinical Psychology, won Erasmus+ Project with the University of Milano-Bicocca.

The present Erasmus + project aims at strengthening cooperation, staff exchange and increasing scientific collaboration between An-Najah National University of Palestine (ANU) and the University of Milano-Bicocca (UNIMIB).

ANU’s internationalisation strategy is mainly focused on promoting structured cooperation between higher education institutions through exchange programmes, in order to improve the quality of education and teaching, to develop research and innovation capacities, improve and enhance the reputation of its curricula and to facilitate access to European universities.

In line with it, both UNIMIB and ANU endeavour to strengthen their partnership, promoting mobility opportunities for staff, and innovative blended learning experiences for students as a first step towards long-term cooperation.  The long term vision behind the cooperation is to build a two-way learning process based on the following 2 objectives: 1) Working together to build professional development strategies and models for teaching staff to enable development of teaching and research skills, by mentoring projects and by mutual sharing of expertise around specific disciplines, thus enriching academic cultures, 2) to promote dialogue, social inclusion and solidarity through academic cooperation between UNIMIB and ANU

An-Najah National University of Palestine (ANU) and the University of Milano- Bicocca (UNIMIB) have a successful history of collaboration for about a decade.  The first formal Memorandum of Understanding was signed in 2009, which paved the way for a positive collaboration between the Faculty of Human Science and Psychology at UNIMIB and the Faculty of Psychology and Education at ANU, including faculty exchange and reciprocal staff visits. Since then, diverse projects have been developed between the two institutions, in terms of co-teaching, clinical training and supervision in the field of clinical psychology. In September 2015, the Palestinian Ministry of Education commissioned UNIMIB as an external evaluator of the ANU Master Program in Clinical Psychology.

ANU is the first University in Palestine offering in its curricula a Master degree in Clinical Psychology (https://www.najah.edu/en/academic/postgraduate-programs/program/clinical-psychology/info-card/).

Project Activities at ANU (August 2018 - May 2019; 160 hours, 20 weeks):

• Four visiting Professors from UNIMIB will teach four academic modules during the mobility period with the aim to broaden, enrich, strengthen and internationalize the new-born Master Program in Clinical Psychology at ANU. There are 6 ECTS credits allocated to each module with a total of 24 ECTS credits (40 hours each module, 8 hours per week).
• UNIMB visiting Professors will supervise at least two student research projects at ANU, providing mentoring, guidance and practical supervision as well as supporting joint publications (up to 2 publications or more).
• Workshop (8hours; 1 ECTS) addressing research planning and opportunities in Palestine will be conducted jointly by staff from both ANU and UNIMB. The expected outcome of this action is to set up a strategic plan of action for further collaboration (grant, common research, joint scientific publications in international journals).
• Workshop (8 hours; 1 ECTS) titled ‘Rethinking Trauma in Environments of Continuous Traumatic Stress’ will be conducted jointly by staff of ANU and UNIMIB (open to 100 mental health providers).
• A series of focus group (at least 4 involving 48 experts -12 for each FG, lasting about 90 minutes each) discussions on advancement in trauma intervention in Palestine will be held in order to identify future directions for possible projects, coming from the experience of Palestinian mental health providers across the West Bank.
• Final conference for dissemination of results and future directions of internalisation. Final Conference aims to present the results achieved by the project and to obtain feedback from participants. The conference will be held in the Auditorium in An-Najah University at the end of second semester (May 2019) with expected around 100 attendees, including students, academicians from across the region, mental health professionals and NGOs.

Prof. Veronese (UNIMIB) along with Dr. Russo (ANU) will be in charge of the overall Management of the mobility period and ensuring quality by putting in a place a sound monitoring plan.

The project management will be based on a horizontal shared responsibility aimed at increasing the ability of the partner in managing deliverables and information/data flow in International complex group.