Rome Global Gateway launches online platform for Catholic academic events

In partnership with local Catholic Roman institutions, the Rome Global Gateway is creating a unique online platform that will feature events organized by Italian and Pontifical Catholic institutions in Rome. This is the first time these featured events will all reside in one place. The platform will aggregate information on academic and cultural in-person and virtual events organized by all participating institutions and will serve as a database for the various audiences.  It will be launched as an initial network of seven that will ideally be extended to other institutions in Rome.

This initial group of Rome-based universities and institutes came together at the invitation of Silvia Dall’Olio, executive director of Notre Dame’s Rome Global Gateway, and the Georgetown University representative in Rome, Debora Tonelli.

The group currently includes the following institutions: Pontifical University Gregoriana, Pontifical University Saint Thomas Aquinus - Angelicum, Pontifical University Urbaniana, Pontifical University Sant’Anselmo, Pontifical Institute for Arabic and Islamic Studies - PISAI, and Italian University LUMSA.

All participants recognized the unparalleled network of academic, cultural and spiritual institutions that makes the Roman experience unique for scholars and students.

“Catholic institutions contribute greatly to such richness through their programs, academic events and resources, though for the most part the programming is focused on and channeled to each institution’s stakeholders,” says Dall’Olio. “One unintended consequence of this is the parcelization of what could otherwise represent a large, unified Roman campus for scholars and students interested in Catholic-inspired production of knowledge.”

The group expressed a keen interest in forms of collaboration that could overcome this parcelization and facilitate the sharing of information about programs at various institutions.

The online platform will host all public events that will be searchable by institution, language, and date. Audiences typically informed about events at specific institutions will now have access to programs organized by the entire network. Each institution is expected to reach a much larger public for its events. Ideally, collaborations and joint events between institutions will derive from it.

The platform will be available in December 2020 on rome.nd.edu. For more information please write to Costanza Montanari.