Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen

Free University of Bozen-Bolzano

The Free University of Bozen-Bolzano was founded in 1997. Our university has a strong international outlook, as testified by its multilingual courses (German, Italian, English and Ladin) and the high number of students and teaching staff from abroad. The university has five faculties, and a high percentage of lecturers (35%) and students (17%) come from abroad and they study, teach and do research in the fields of Economics, Natural Sciences, Engineering, Social Sciences, Education and Design. We have 4,100 students registered to more than 30 undergraduate and postgraduate degree courses. The taught modules on offer and our research projects are linked to international and inter-regional networks. For example, within the Euregio university project, we are partnered with the universities of Innsbruck and Trento, and we are committed to reaching top quality standards. Our teaching and research programmes revolve around five faculties and seven competence centres: Faculty of Agricultural, Environmental and Food Sciences Faculty of Design and Art Faculty of Economics and Management Faculty of Education Faculty of Engineering Competence Centre for Economic, Ecological and Social Sustainability Competence Centre for Mountain Innovation Ecosystems Competence Centre for Plant Health Competence Centre for Regional History Competence Centre for School Inclusion Competence Centre for Social Work, Social Pedagogy and Social Policy Competence Centre Tourism and Mobility In national rankings, our university reaches top positions every year. In 2022, for the sixth consecutive year, the Italian research centre for social studies Censis has ranked our university as number one among smaller private universities (less than 5,000 students). We rank high in international rankings too, especially under the categories 'internationalisation', 'student satisfaction' and 'citations'.