The Center for Research and Development (CRD) at the American University of Iraq-Baghdad (AUIB) organized a seminar on Iraqi-Polish cooperation in the field of education, where Dr. Dorota Woroniecka, a senior researcher at the Polish Academy of Sciences, gave a presentation on some of the aspects of the aforementioned cooperation during the 1970s and 1980s.
The seminar is part of a research project at CRD on the relations between Iraq and Eastern Europe in the socialist era. Currently focused on the discipline of History, the research project might develop to become interdisciplinary, including political, economic, and broader cultural relations.
Education was an integral part of Polish-Iraqi relations, and hundreds of Iraqi students studied and received training at Polish universities and technical institutes, while Polish academics served as instructors in Iraqi universities, explained Dr. Woroniecka, highlighting in this context the establishment of the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Mosul by Polish professors, thus introducing Polish study programs and the aesthetics of East European socialist modernism. The school graduated hundreds of Iraqi students, some of whom replaced their Polish instructors during the 1990s, and continue to teach today, according to Dr. Woroniecka.