New co-ordinator CEP Project on Higher Education.

Jose Carlos Romero is the new co-ordinator of a key CEP Project on Higher Education. Originally from Malaga in Spain and with a background in engineering and now finishing a PhD in Comillas, Madrid, he shares below his hopes for the work.

The Higher Education project links Jesuit universities and faculties with our social centres. It will focus on seven key areas: ecology; poverty, economics and ethics; Ignatian Studies, Christian / Muslim relations; dialogue, science and religion; anthropology,  migration and refugees.

CEP: José Carlos: what attracted you to come and work in the CEP for this Higher Education for Social Transformation project?  

JCR: The international nature of this project will give me the opportunity to meet a lot of colleagues who are working for different Jesuit institutions in Europe and to help them work together in order to achieve common goals. So that can be amazing.  

JD: There is big interest from the ground up.  How are you going to coordinate all of that?  It is a lot of work!

JCR: It is, but I am not alone.  We are a team working on this.  The idea is to start by helping these clusters to start working on each of the topics and working with a Steering Committee. One of the most important things about this is that we don’t want it to be just Higher Education on its own. The idea is to include our social institutions in developing all these ideas so that all this deep thinking can really contribute to a real change in our society.  Hence the Social Centres will help the Higher Education institutions to understand how to make and translate all this deep thinking to society.

JD: If you want some sort of social change you need to involve politicians . What is your thinking about that?

JCR: Yes, that  must be part of our planning because, in the end if we are not able to reach politicians and decision makers, in other words, to do advocacy, it will be impossible to achieve this social transformation. Of course we are not to solve all the problems of Europe, but we can provide some fresh ideas, deep and sound ideas, and give hope.