The European Commission (EU Research and Innovation Programme “HORIZON 2020 Excellent Science”, Social Sciences and Humanities) has approved Pierluca Birindelli’s research project The Cultural Experience of International Students: Narratives from North and South Europe. As an experienced researcher, he has been awarded the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship Grant. Experts in the field grant MC individual fellowships through an extremely competitive global-scale selection and independent evaluation. This program is intended to support the best, most promising researchers. Birindelli’s proposal was approved with a high score and endorsed by appreciative reviews: “The research is innovative, original, credible, well founded, and rigorously described. The proposal is clearly interdisciplinary. The proposed research would certainly contribute to the scientific advancement of the project field.”

The fellowship entails mobility, and Birindelli’s host institution for the next two years, starting from September 1, 2016 will be the University of Helsinki, ranked among the top 100 universities in the world (according to the ARWU, QS, and THE rankings). UH is one of the leading institutions in the internationalization process of the European academic system. Birindelli believes that, through future joint research and teaching projects, the University of Helsinki could become an interesting partner for ISI Florence.