Heritage Network - History

The HERITAGE NETWORK as it exists today is the result of several years of partnerships, meetings and projects between 29 top Indian and European Higher Education Institutions.

2009 – 2013: Centrale Nantes is granted the coordination of the first Erasmus Mundus Partnership project: WILLPOWER.

The WILLPOWER Programme objective was to create partnerships at the academic level to strengthen ties between India and Europe. It also aimed at strengthening research and development cooperation, and relationships in areas such as trade, politics and international organizations.

2012 – 2016: The European Union accepts the Erasmus Mundus Action 2 HERITAGE project.

18 Indo-European Institutions worked together to enable 144 Indian undergraduate, graduate, PhD and Post-Doc students as well as staff to participate in an international experience at the European Heritage partner institutions for short/long time mobilities.

May 2016 (9th – 10th): Final meeting (IIT Guwahati, India) of the HERITAGE project.

The key topics addressed were internationalization, recognition of studies, quality and sustainability. Creation of the HERITAGE NETWORK.

May 2017 (5th – 6th): First GA meeting (Centrale Nantes) of the HERITAGE NETWORK

Election of the SEC members.

February 2018 (5th – 6th): Second GA meeting (Indian Institute of Technology Madras) of the HERITAGE NETWORK

Launch of the Heritage Network Workshop series with a first Workshop on Smart Cities. Four new members join the family: IIT Dhanbad (India), IIT Roorkee (India), Universidad Politécnica Madrid (Spain) and KTH (Sweden).

May 2019 (27th – 28th): Third GA meeting (Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon) of the HERITAGE NETWORK

Second Workshop theme: Human Oriented Engineering. Prof. Manuela Galli, Polimi /  Prof. Pratyush Kumar, IIT Madras Five new members join the family : IIT Delhi (India), IIT Ropar (India), Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), Universitat Politécnica of Catalunya (Spain), Technische Universität Dresden (Germany).

2020: The HERITAGE NETWORK maintains its activities online

March 20, 2020: The 4th GA due to be hosted by IIT Guwahati is postponed until further notice due to the coronavirus outbreak.
June 27, 2020: Online consortium meeting, new prospective members are introduced to the Network
October 5, 2020: Four new members are elected online to join the HERITAGE NETWORK: IIT Indore (India), IIT Tirupati (India), NITK Surathkal (India) and the University of Genoa (Italy).

May 2021 (5th): 4th GA (online) of the HERITAGE NETWORK

This long-awaited General Assembly was the occasion to introduce the Network to the new staff involved in the member institutions and build solid grounds for future cooperation.
The future of the Heritage Network will be shaped by the freshly elected new President Prof. Raghunathan Rengaswamy (IIT Madras) and Vice-President Prof. Teresa Zielinska (WUT). More information on the Heritage Network current governance here.