On 29 April 2025, another of the informal meetings with experts took place in the University Library of the Catholic University in Ružomberok (CU). The international event entitled ‘Cultural Awareness and Communication: a Workshop for the University Community’ and ‘Discover Bulgaria - a Hidden Jewel in the Balkans’ was organised by the Department of Foreign Relations for the third time.

The aim of this meetings is to create a space for professional networking among colleagues across CU, to promote the exchange of experiences and to open up new perspectives for the development of academic cooperation.

The first part of the workshop was led by guests from the University of Silesia in Katowice (Poland). Barbara Grabowska, Ilona Fajfer-Kruczek and Alicja Hruzd-Matuszczyk, who work in special and intercultural pedagogy, sociotherapy and identity research. In an interactive format, they discussed the importance of cultural sensitivity and presented approaches on how to effectively respond to diversity in university education. "International exchange is not only about mobility, but mainly about creating space for dialogue and understanding. Universities are places where different world views can meet - and enrich each other," emphasised Ilona Fajfer-Kruczek.

In the second part of the event, Nina Belcheva and Petar Kazakov from the Medical University of Plovdiv (Bulgaria) presented the cultural specificities of their country and the academic opportunities in the field of physiotherapy and medical education at their university. "We believe that even short personal meetings can be the beginning of long-term cooperation. After all, sharing culture is the basis for understanding and innovation," said Nina Belcheva.

The series of informal meetings will continue in the coming months. With this format, the CU supports the development of internationalisation in order to enable employees to create learning communities with each other.