The Association for the Promotion and the Development of Joint International Programmes in higher education (ProDeJIP) is an independent non-profit association, which welcomes both individual and institutional members from throughout the world. The mission of the Association is to support the promotion and the development of joint international programs in higher education.

In order to realize its mission the Association:

• founds and coordinates task forces and supports cooperative activities of its members;
• represents the views and interests of its members in political and administrative contexts within Europe;
• contributes to efforts to improve the professional recognition and to facilitate the mobility of joint international program coordinators;
• researches further ways of promoting joint international programmes;
• offers means for communication, including a newsletter, a web-site and an electronic communication network;
• organizes conferences, in particular the annual Congress of the Association;
• stimulates the development and supply of continued education on issues and methods of particular concern to the promotion and development of joint international programmes;

ProDeJIP was initially created within the framework of the Erasmus Mundus Action 3 project EM-iDEA, on the occasion of the final EM-iDEA Conference, which took place in Bordeaux in July 2013. The EM-iDEA project ended in August 2014. 

EM-iDEA's overall objective was to create conditions such that the Erasmus Mundus (EM) community at large could jointly exploit, explain and discuss its involvement in the Erasmus Mundus programme, so as to find ways to strengthen and improve it. The project targeted the following categories of persons and actors of international cooperation in higher education, who would benefit from the project directly or indirectly, as mentioned:

• EM coordinators: academic and administrative staff from the EU and from third-countries (directly)
• Coordinators of international cooperation programmes, from the EU and from third-countries (directly)
• HEI representatives, from the EU and from third-countries (directly)
• Students and doctoral candidates, from around the world (indirectly)
• Policy makers, from the EU and from third-countries (indirectly)

The project's main geographical targets outside Europe were: Africa, Northern and Latin America, and Europe's neighbouring countries.

The main activities of the project were:

1) To perform a needs analysis in order to identify the most useful ways to help coordinators of joint study programmes and/or international partnerships;

2) To organize at least six regional conferences throughout Europe to bring together the EM community around structured exchanges (see below for dates and venues);

3) To arrive at the creation of the Erasmus Mundus Concilium; an independent, non-profit association, with a sufficient number of members among EM coordinators and a business plan allowing it to pursue the activities initiated with this project and relying essentially on its own resources;

4) To survey tools and services available to coordinators of international cooperation programmes, that may be fully taken over by the association, such as a fully-fledged collaborative website and online tools for the management and the quality assessment of joint programmes.

The main outcomes of the project were:

• The conclusions of the needs analysis and of the survey of services and tools available to joint programme coordinators;
• The proceedings of the debates held at the regional conferences and the supports of the lectures delivered;
• A project for the Erasmus Mundus Concilium* policy statement, by-laws, first business plan and first programme of activities.

*The initial name put forward for the association, before ProDeJIP was settled on.

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The European regional Conferences took place at the following locations:

• Ghent, Belgium: November 2011
• Lund, Sweden: March 2012
• Vilnius, Lithuania: July 2012
• Novi Sad, Serbia: October 2012
• Valencia, Spain: March 2013
• Bordeaux, France: July 2013

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Further details on these events can be found in the corresponding section of the Conferences page, which can be visited here

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Further presentations of the project and the newly created association were given at the 2013 EAIE Conference in Istanbul, during the annual ANIE (African Network for Internationalization of Education) Conference in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in October 2013, and at a meeting of representatives of the members of Grupo Montevideo at the University of Santiago (Chile) in March 2014.

The following partners took part in the project:

• University of Bordeaux (coordinating institution).
• The European Universities of Bologna, Deusto, Ghent, Lund, Nice Sophia Antipolis, Padua, Valencia and Vilnius.
• The third country universities Concordia (Canada) and Novi Sad (Serbia).
• The European networks of HEIs: Coimbra Group and Santander Group.
• The network Grupo Montevideo from Latin America and the ANIE (African Network for Internationalization of Education) based in Kenya.
• ADERA, an organization working closely with HEIs in Bordeaux and with a longstanding experience in the staging of scientific events in Europe and beyond

The project also benefitted from the support of the Utrecht network, UNIVERSIA and the French National Erasmus+ Agency.

The dissemination of the results was performed at the conferences and through the communication channels of the 15 partners of the project and the three supporting partners. The conference programmes, presentations and the results of the project can be viewed on this site.