Royal University for Women and Italian Embassy in Bahrain Celebrate the 700th Anniversary of Dante Alighieri

25,May 2021

Royal University for Women (RUW), the leading university in the Kingdom of Bahrain dedicated to women empowerment and advancement through higher education, in cooperation with the Embassy of Italy in the Kingdom of Bahrain, celebrated the 700th Anniversary of the death of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri who’s widely known as the “Father of the Italian Language”. The celebration was attended by H.E Paola Amadei, the Italian Ambassador to the Kingdom of Bahrain and Dr Mona Suri, the Academic Vice President of the Royal University for Women in addition to the students of the Italian language course at RUW and professionals from the community.

The Centre for General Studies at RUW organised the celebration virtually by hosting Prof Leyla Livraghi, Post Doctoral Fellow for the Italian Nationally Funded Project (PRIN) ‘Hypermedia Dante Network’ (HDN) from the University of Pisa, Italy. Prof Livraghi presented a lecture on Dante to the students of the Italian Language Course at RUW in which she highlighted Dante’s life, poetry and works in addition to the “Supreme Poet”. The event was moderated by the Director of International Affairs, Dr Vivien Exartier and Ms Mariangela Pellegrini Professor of the Italian language course where they welcomed all the attendees.

The event started with a welcoming speech from Dr Mona Suri, the Academic Vice President of RUW, in which she emphasised the special cooperation with the Italian Embassy in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Dr Suri expressed RUW pride in housing the first Centre for Italian Language and Culture in the region in cooperation with the Italian Embassy and underlined the importance of this collaboration and the ongoing activities to explore cultures during these challenging times of COVID-19.

From her part, HE Paola Amadei, the Italian Ambassador to the Kingdom of Bahrain thanked RUW for organising this event with the Embassy team and reiterated the Embassy’s commitment to the cooperation with the Kingdom of Bahrain in the field of culture and education.

The Director of the Centre for General Studies, Dr Humam Elagha, expressed that the university is proud to be the first university in the Kingdom of Bahrain to offer Italian language courses to students and the community and highlighted the importance of learning Italian language, being a language of arts and emotions. He also added that RUW is currently offering courses with certified international certificates for learning Italian language and it's open for students and the general public to register.