Université Saint-Joseph (Beirut, Libanon)

Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth (USJ) is the oldest and most important french-speaking university in Lebanon. It is among the most renowned universities of the country and the Middle East. USJ was founded in 1875 by the Jesuit order and has since produced numerous graduates famous in Lebanon as well as internationally, especially politicians and intellectuals. The university is known beyond the borders of the region for its medical faculty as well as its oriental library that houses 200 000 books and 50 000 photographs on the Middle East. About 12 000 students attend USJ, which consists of five campuses that are spread all over Beirut. The university is well known for its practice to ignore confessional boundaries which still play an important role in everyday life in Lebanon. The courses are mainly held in French, as well as in English and Arabic. 

International cooperations are one of the key aspects of USJ, which cooperates with more than 350 universities world wide and has an international office in Paris. Currently 400 professors of USJ are abroad - at the university of Erfurt we host guest lecturers from Lebanon each year to teach courses as part of our Master program "Middle Easter Society/Anthropology and History" (MESH). This bi-national Master program was jointly established by both universities in 2011. The USJ is the only university in the Middle East to use the European ECTS-system. The master students from Erfurt spent a whole Semester at Université Saint-Joseph taking courses in Sociology, Anthropology and History, as well as Arabic Language Courses taught by the universities own language center. Upon completion of the program the graduates receive the degree "master recherche" from USJ in addition to the M.A.-degree from the university of Erfurt as a double degree.  

Photographic impressions and information on the history of USJ are available in our blog (in German).  

Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (Jounieh, Libanon)

The Holy Spirit University of Kaslik (USEK) is the third largest university in Lebanon after USJ and the Lebanese University. It was founded in 1938 by the Lebanese Maronite Order. USEK welcomes more than 8,000 students across its twelve faculties and three institutes; i.e. fifteen academic units which offer a broad array of high-level diversified education. The main campus of the private Catholic university is located in the city of Jounieh between Beirut (in the south) and Byblos (in the north). USEK is multilingual by tradition, and an English- and a French-speaking institution. Thanks to an extremely dense network of national and international relations, it plays a key role in training highly-qualified researchers and professionals. As part of the cooperation with the University of Erfurt there is a regular exchange of students and lecturers since 2014