H.E. Mrs. Wendy Dorman-Smith, Madam Ambassador of Ireland to the Republic of Croatia, visited the UNIRI Rectorate on Thursday, 6 March, accompanied by Mr. Bernard Vrban, Public Relations Officer at the Irish Embassy. On behalf of the Rector, Prof. Snježana Prijić-Samaržija, Ph.D., the distinguished guests were welcomed by Prof. Senka Maćešić, Ph.D., Vice-Rector for Digitalisation and Development, Prof. Lado Kranjčević, Ph.D., Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, and Assoc. Prof. Aidan O’Malley, Ph.D., from the Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences.
Vice-Rector Maćešić briefly presented the University of Rijeka, emphasizing its strong international activities and its focus on European values, especially thanks to its membership in YUFE and YERUN. Driven by the wave of migration and numerous geopolitical conflicts, the meeting served as a perfect opportunity to discuss the increasingly obvious problem of brain drain, how to attract foreign students, and make study programmes more attractive and adapt them to contemporary trends in the labour market.
As the Chair of English Literary Studies and the main initiator of numerous Irish Studies Guest Lecture Series, Aidan O’Malley expressed his desire for an even better cooperation with Irish universities and also emphasized the importance of strengthening literature at the graduate level. Prof. O’Malley studied at Trinity College Dublin and University College Dublin and is eager to welcome as many Irish scholars as possible to Rijeka.
Madam Ambassador Dorman-Smith and Vice-Rector Maćešić agreed there is a shared desire to improve good relations, emphasizing concrete forms of cooperation between the University of Rijeka and Irish higher education institutions. The participants of the meeting also touched upon demographic problems, the consequences of the pandemic, the lack of study programmes in English, and the decline in the number of students. They even discussed the numerous challenges that all European countries are facing due to the increasing number of foreign workers.
During her stay in Rijeka, Madam Ambassador met with local government representatives and will also visit the Bura supercomputer on the University Campus, accompanied by Prof. Kranjčević, who is also the Head of the Centre for Advanced Computing and Modeling.
Wendy Dorman-Smith is the fourth resident Irish Ambassador to the Republic of Croatia. Since joining the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs in 2002, she has served in the Irish Embassies in Mozambique, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, and Hungary. She has also worked on different desks in the home Department in Dublin, including EU affairs and the Africa desk. Most recently (2020-2024), she has served as the Consul General of Ireland in Shanghai, China.
