St Petersburg University opens a representative office in Latin America

The project is aimed at increasing the prestige of higher education in Russia and Brazil, developing educational and scientific programmes, and strengthening relations between BRICS countries. Today, the University not only focuses on implementing educational programmes and conducting joint research with scientific institutions of BRICS counties but also serves as an expert organisation on the most current issues in international law, medicine, business, economics, and other fields.

"SPbU Representative Office in Campinas will become an important centre for cultural dialogue, strengthening mutual understanding between Russia and Brazil, and will enable the implementation of joint educational programmes, research projects, and future international conferences to take place. St Petersburg University and the University of Campinas, at the premises of which the new representative office is opened, are two classical research centres that carry out innovative projects and achieve breakthrough results in various fields of knowledge. Interesting that Campinas, just like St Petersburg, is a university city," noted Rector of SPbU Nikolay Kropachev

Currently, representative offices of St Petersburg University operate in the People’s Republic of China, Thailand, Spain, Uzbekistan, the Republic of Korea, Greece, Iran, the Republic of Moldova, the Republic of Belarus, and other countries. The SPbU Representative Office in Brazil is the University’s 13th overseas body.

SPbU Representative Office at the University of Campinas will hold a series of joint conferences, seminars, and public lectures by renowned Russian scholars, as well as cultural events, summer schools and applicant days.

Development and implementation of joint educational programmes will be a special focus area of the new representative office. Currently, St Petersburg University and the University of Campinas are developing two double degree master’s programmes: "Applied Human and Social Sciences" at Unicamp and "Political Governance and Public Policy" (taught in English) at SPbU.

While being in Brazil, SPbU delegation also visited one of the best schools in São Paulo — the Franciscan College of Saint Michael the Archangel, and signed a cooperation agreement between SPbU and the College. Two parties intend to organise a Russian-Brazilian competition of research papers and projects for school students under the supervision of scholars and schoolteachers.

The first lectures at SPbU Representative Office in Unicamp were delivered by Professor Kirill Nazarenko (Department of Source Studies of Russian History), who spoke about the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, and Margarita Farrakhova, a teacher at SPbU Centre for Open Education, who introduced culture of Russia and St Petersburg to the audience. Additionally, the Representative Office held several events devoted to the Russian culture, history, and language. Andrey Lesin, Director of SPbU Language Testing Centre, spoke about the University’s language training system and Russian proficiency exams, while Maria Slastunova, Advisor to the Vice-Rector for International Affairs, presented short-term internship programmes within SPbU summer and winter schools.

For a long stretch of time, St Petersburg University has been committed to promoting the Russian language abroad, implementing awareness-raising and educational projects to help more people acquire new knowledge in Russian. Since 2018, SPbU holds the Olympiad in Russian as a Foreign Language, which attracted over 35,000 participants from 165 countries for the past five years. In the future, not only students, but also schoolchildren could participate in the Olympiad at the SPbU Representative Office in Brazil.

Russian-Brazilian cooperation in education and science is developing dynamically both bilaterally and within BRICS. In 2021 SPbU presented a BRICS investment arbitration project at the St Petersburg International Economic Forum. Furthermore, every year SPbU holds "Russia and Ibero-America in a Globalizing World: History and Modernity" International Forum, which provides a platform for scholars, experts, and politicians from Latin America to discuss important issues concerning bilateral cooperation.

In 2024, the BRICS Business Council approved a report on international payment instruments recommended for use in the BRICS countries, which includes a Decentralised Interbank Messaging System. The architecture for this system was developed at the Distributed Ledger Technologies Centre at St Petersburg University. This system is designed to enable any country to pursue an independent financial policy while ensuring the confidentiality of transmitted messages.