"The BANUU project originates from the experience of WALADU, a CBHE joint project financed in 2016 including part of the BANUU consortium, which has allowed to improve the teaching quality and structure of BA courses in Archaeology in Iraq. During this project, the partners observed several gaps and shortcomings concerning student employability due to the lack of structured University-enterprise connections. The BANUU consortium therefore aims at developing a Structural Project that involving the Iraqi Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research as full partner can contribute to the improvement of the students’ employability in the field of Humanities in Iraq by creating new pathways of cooperation between Universities and the public and enterprise sectors. As main results, BANUU will create a national framework for designing and implementing internships in Archaeology and Cultural Heritage in Iraq as well new pathways to enhance Iraqi students’ transversal skills (focus on entrepreneurial skills). The new frameworks and pathways will be piloted through internships, seminars and practical activities in 3 specific strategic sectors through a pedagogical strategy based on a ""learning by doing"" phylosophy and a ""training of trainers"" approach. Finally, the results of this piloting phase will be framed at national level strenghtening the relations between HEIs (Universities, Ministry) and the wider national economic and social environment. In particular, this result will be pursued by the creation of a permanent Inter-Ministerial commission that will be in charge of drafting new policies on public-private cooperation in the field of Humanities. The creation of these new institutionalised and structured spaces in which Universities and Enterprises can share experiences, ideas and reach a common vision as the basis for drafting comprehensive agreements and contracts, represents a key opportunity in terms of ensuring the project long-term impact and sustainability."

During the last decades the Iraqi HE System has suffered for a remarkable drop of quality and competitiveness. Education and cultural heritage have been seriously threatened and both teaching quality and access to education have been subjected to a dramatic decline. The WALADU project aims to improve the HE in the field of the Humanities and increase students' opportunities in the Iraqi labour market. The Consortium will work in line with a shared and EU-aligned roadmap in order to develop and modernize the Iraqi HEIs in the fields of archaeology and history at BA level. It will foster long-term international collaborations between Iraqi and EU HEIs to allow students and academics to grow up in an international environment. The general structure of the project is a combination of research and practical activities starting from an analysis of problems and needs in Iraqi HEIs, as well as the identification of local stakeholders. Thanks to the definition of an efficient Training System Methodology and training activities, Iraqi teachers, researchers and administrative staff will improve their competencies. The project will develop and implement new teaching units and materials for the new BA courses and make them available on the WALADU and Iraqi HEIs websites. WALADU will also provide universities with libraries (WALib) and laboratories (WALab) equipped with advanced technical facilities which will support BA students’ education. WALADU will activate new internship programs, in collaboration with the Iraqi Ministry of HE and SBAH, for future employment in the HE and cultural heritage fields, and it will create an international network (ASEN) to reinforce collaboration and foster future exchange programs between Iraq and EU.During the project period and beyond its lifetime, products and results will be disseminated at national and international level, in order to ensure project continuity, sustainability and possible replicability in other fields and countries

Nahrein is the Arabic word for Mesopotamia - the ancient "land between two rivers", centred on modern-day Iraq and northern Syria. The literate, urban cultures of Sumer, Babylonia and Assyria together represent the vital first half of history, millennia before Greece and Rome. Yet they are also a new antiquity, rediscovered archaeologically in the 19th and 20th centuries, irrevocably entangled in the region's messy politics of colonialism and dictatorship, and now threatened by the conflicts tearing the region apart. Millions of dollars of international aid are being pumped into the documentation, digitisation and conservation of threatened and war-damaged cultural heritage sites across the Middle East, with little thought for local interests and impacts. The Nahrein Network by contrast will enable local people to reclaim this heritage as local history, and to put it to constructive use for local communities and economies. It aims to harness interdisciplinary humanities research and education to help Middle Eastern universities, museums, archives and cultural heritage sites build their capacity to contribute to their countries' economic, cultural and social development in the years ahead. The wars in Iraq and Syria spread their deadly effects far beyond the immediate conflict zones. But much-needed emergency relief should not be at the expense of planning for longer-term economic and social regrowth. Network partner UNESCO Iraq identifies education and culture as two key Areas of Action, with gender equality and academic isolation as of particular concern, while UNAMI aims to aid social reconciliation though cultural dialogue. Centred initially on southern Iraq and Kurdistan, Nahrein will run a Research Centre directed by Dr Saad Eskander at the University of Kurdistan Hewler (Erbil) and two collaborative hubs at the University of Baghdad and Basrah Museum. In year 3 it will expand into Turkey, Lebanon and--if safe--Syria and Iran with help from the British Institute at Ankara, the Council for British Research in the Levant and, we hope, the British Institute of Persian Studies. With support from the British Institute for the Study of Iraq, in Strand 1 we will welcome humanities educators and researchers back into the international fold by offering varied options for international, interdisciplinary collaboration, training, mentoring and peer-group support, especially for women, minorities, and early career researchers. In Strand 2 we will issue six-monthly funding calls for interdisciplinary, collaborative projects open to academics, cultural heritage professionals, NGOs and community groups. Each call will address a different selection of five overall themes, related to the core team's own research, chosen to address the Network's five primary Aims (see Objectives). This sequencing will allow research projects to learn from and build on prior findings, and enable Network participants to respond flexibly to new developments in the region. We aim to strike a balance between providing appropriate support and expertise from the project team and allowing Network participants to take the lead on their own research and development. We will encourage a wide range of traditional and innovative methodologies and outputs, both theoretical and practice-based. However, the emphasis will be on open-access, peer-reviewed online publication, for instance via UCL Press and the Open Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus (oracc.org). In this way we will maximise accessibility of the Network's findings while providing authors and readers with the reassurance of high academic quality. In Strand 3 we will set up five working groups, one for each Aim, to evaluate, share and embed good practice, and make policy recommendations across the network's full geographical range. With partners we will secure funding to develop a sustainable new generation of high quality humanities research in and for the benefit of the wider Middle East.

The overarching goal of INsPIRe is to support modernisation and internationalisation of the Governance system of HEIs in Iraq with a specific focus on planning and programming systems. Due to the recent crisis and political economic situation, the current higher education system requires a strong intervention to face the weakness of the existing governance system. The WP1- Update of needs analysis requires the realisation of a comprehensive literature review aimed at identifying the existing governance frameworks and the development of an update needs analysis in Iraq HE system. The WP2- Training and capacity building activities for internal staff in quality assurance and strategic planning aims at realising capacity building through: online training; 3-days training study visits at four European Universities; 3-days training field missions in Iraq; 10 ToT (one per Iraqi university). Once the training section will end, the partners are ready to start the WP3- Implementation of changes and best practices through action plans, where the trainees and their institutions will be involved in the development of action plans that should be implemented by each HEI. According to the relevant literature on higher education governance, internationalization and wide participation of stakeholders are trend topic that guarantee a better governance. Thus the WP4 provides a specific focus on the management and governance of international relation through the development of useful tools and techniques. The WP5 provides the set up of a formal consultative body within HEIs, in order to assure a better coordination between the systems of higher education, and private/public sector, also ensuring the involvement of other non-state actors. In term of impact at short term, improvement and strength of skills and knowledge on innovative governance practices and strategic planning topics will be ensured as well as on long term the development of an ongoing process of self- improvement.

The educational system in Iraq and Iran is facing many challenges such as lack of professional skills and competencies of teachers, weakness of methods and applications, inadequate access to technology, lack of sufficient knowledge and ability to exploit technology. PC universities have overcome these challenges.The aim of OPATEL consists in establishing and developing a center in IR&IQ unis to train staff and students by using an Online Platform for TEaching and learning to be as a hub for using best practices of ICT in education, as well as raising competencies of lecturers and teachers by enhancing learning processes of students.Wider Objectives:- Establishing a well-equipped center for E-Learning in partner unis- Transfer of EU-Experience in areas of ICT, skills development and merge new generations in this experience.- Training and following up with staff and students on how to develop, share learning objects, and collaborate their courses, presentations and exercises on online platforms.- Improving quality of teaching and learning by building the capacity of universities how to evaluate, develop and design e-courses.- Enhancing cooperation with EU partners through mutual visits to develop strategies how to move from teaching to learning and develop scalable sustainable solutions.The use of Online Platform will steer the education in the right direction. Training of staff to enhance and develop their abilities, solving the problems of ICT use in education and creating and publishing common methodology and documentation for lifelong learning, E-learning and training for IR&IQ in accordance with EU-Standards. 3 languages will be used in the project: Arabic, Persian and English. Many factors will be used for dissemination and success of OPATEL such as press and media; presenting progress using websites; participation of staff and students, participation of ministries of high educations and other HEIs.