The University of Eastern Finland’s success in securing global mobility funding has enabled staff and student mobility for more than 550 individuals over the past decade. This September, the university hosted researchers from Nepal.
Laboratories dedicated to research on fish, meetings with fellow scholars, modern university library facilities and beautiful campus areas are among the things Professor Sunila Rai and Assistant Professor Rahul Ranjan of the Agriculture and Forestry University of Nepal will remember about their visit to the Joensuu and Kuopio campuses of the University of Eastern Finland in September 2025.
Erasmus+ funding for global mobility facilitates staff mobility between Nepal and Finland, fostering both bilateral relationships between researchers and broader collaboration in research and education in both countries.
“We’ve learned a great deal about the university’s work culture and about Finnish culture, including the food. The library here is amazing. Now we understand how library operations should be organised,” said Rahul Ranjan, Head of the Aquatic Resource Department, on the outcomes of the visit.
Sunila Rai was already familiar with researchers in environmental and biosciences at the University of Eastern Finland, making the visit both anticipated and welcomed.
“This is a continuation of the collaboration we began in 2013. Our university focuses on agriculture and forestry, and some of our laboratories are located far apart. Here, the university is more multidisciplinary, and the campuses are more compact. We can learn from both cultures,” said Sunila Rai, who also serves as Chair of the Nepal Fisheries Society.
Sunila Rai and Rahul Ranjan’s home university, the Agriculture and Forestry University of Nepal, was founded in 2010 and is located in Bharatpur, Chitwan, west of the capital Kathmandu. This university of technology has over 4,700 students and approximately 500 staff members.
Their area of expertise lies in fisheries and aquaculture research. While Nepal is renowned for the towering peaks of the Himalayan mountains and tourism is a major contributor to the national economy, the fisheries sector, too, plays a vital role. Small-scale fish farming is growing rapidly in Nepal, but the industry is also facing challenges, such as declining biodiversity and climate change, which brings more frequent floods and droughts. Solutions to these challenges can be found through global collaboration.
Staff and student mobility between Nepal and Eastern Finland will continue: university staff from Finland will visit Nepal later this autumn, and Nepalese students are expected on exchange in Finland in January.
Staff mobility helps build and sustain long-term partnerships
The visit by the Nepalese scholars is a prime example of staff mobility facilitated by global mobility funding. The University of Eastern Finland has actively applied for Erasmus+ global mobility grants, with good success.
Since 2015, the university has been awarded 2.8 million euros in global mobility funding, placing it among the top Finnish higher education institutions. The university has fared particularly well in calls organised under the current Erasmus+ programme, running from 2021 to 2027.
All in all, global mobility funding has, by autumn 2025, made it possible for more than 550 students and staff members to engage in global mobility.
“Global mobility funding is crucial for supporting international mobility at the University of Eastern Finland, especially when it comes to building new collaborations in research and education. While individual grants may be modest, they have helped initiate many long-term partnerships,” Riikka Pellinen, Director of International Affairs, points out.
We need real-life interaction between people, beyond the digital world. Participating in a staff mobility is one of the easiest and most effective ways of meeting and building connections with your international partners and colleagues.
Roseanna Avento
Global Development Manager
Global Development Manager Roseanna Avento recommends staff mobility as the first measure to be taken when universities are forging partnerships on the global arena.
“It’s important for staff to meet their counterparts face-to-face and learn about each other’s institutions. We need real-life interaction between people, beyond the digital world. Participating in a staff mobility is one of the easiest and most effective ways of meeting and building connections with your international partners and colleagues. This is how we bring different universities and fields of research together,” Roseanna Avento says, summing things up.
Health sciences and natural sciences are active in mobility
The University of Eastern Finland collaborates across a variety of disciplines with numerous partner universities worldwide, including in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia, and South America.
Between 2022 to 2025, the university’s global mobility involved, on average, 20 to 26 countries annually.
Looking at individual disciplines, health sciences and natural sciences account for most of the global mobility funding used.
At the University of Eastern Finland, countries for global mobility partnerships can be proposed by researchers, teachers, departments and schools in the application phase. Indeed, the emphasis on health and natural sciences may reflect these fields’ prior activity in global collaboration.
“For future rounds of application, we welcome proposals from all disciplines,” Pellinen says.
Staff mobility is currently active and running smoothly at the University of Eastern Finland. However, Roseanna Avento would like to see more investment in outgoing student mobility, which remains low. She believes that if global mobility among students was incentivised in the Finnish universities’ funding model, the numbers would likely go up.
“If we want to collaborate with one another in this shared, global world of ours, but are headed in different directions, we have no hope of understanding each other. When students get to interact with their peers across the word and explore new environments, intercultural understanding grows, and we learn new things on both sides. This is also how we advance collaboration in research and education,” Avento emphasises.
