Celebration of University Day and presentation of the UC Prize to be held this Saturday
The solemn ceremony begins at 3pm in the Great Hall of Acts. At 5:30pm, the bust of King Dinis will be inaugurated in the Private Examination Room.
The University of Coimbra (UC) is celebrating its 735th on Saturday, the 1st of March, with the solemn ceremony of the University Day taking place at the Great Hall of Acts - Sala dos Capelos. The event begins at 3pm and includes the presentation of the UC Prize to comedian and TV presenter Herman José.
The ceremony will be broadcast live on www.uc.pt/emdireto and will feature speeches by the President of the General Council, Carlos Henggeler Antunes (in office until the co-opted members take office and the President for the 2024–2028 term is elected); the Coordinator of the UC Workers' Commission, António Trindade; the Director of Santander Universidades Portugal, Inês Gouveia; the winner of the UC 2025 Prize (sponsored by the Santander Portugal Foundation), Herman José; and the Rector of the UC, Amílcar Falcão. The winner of the UC Prize will be presented by Manuel Portela, Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and Director of the General Library of the University of Coimbra.
The ceremony, featuring the traditional presentation of doctoral certificates to the University's new PhD graduates and a tribute to recently retired UC staff, will pay tribute to the new Emeritus Professors—an honorary title recently created to recognise UC professors and researchers for their outstanding work and achievements in the academic and scientific fields, as well as their contribution to the national and international visibility of the UC.
The 11 new appointed UC Emeritus Professors are António Dias de Figueiredo, Bernardete Ribeiro, Carlos Fiolhais, Christopher Brett, Domingos Xavier Viegas, José Dias Urbano and Teresa Vieira (Faculty of Sciences and Technology); Carlos Fortuna (Faculty of Economics); and Maria de Fátima Silva, Maria Luísa Portocarrero and Lúcio Cunha, (Faculty of Arts and Humanities).
The commemorative programme for UC Day 2025 will begin at 10am in the Pátio das Escolas with a team-building activity (in which members of the UC community will create a human logo to mark the institution's 735th anniversary), and will also include the inauguration of a bust of King Dinis and an exhibition on the process of reconstructing the monarch's face at 5.30pm in the Private Examination Room. The bust represents the face that was unveiled in January, after a long multidisciplinary project to reconstruct the figure of the king (founder of the University of Coimbra), under the scientific coordination of Eugénia Cunha, professor and researcher at the Faculty of Sciences and Technology of the UC.
In the evening of this special day, at 9:30 pm, the Academic Orchestra of the University of Coimbra will take the stage of the Gil Vicente Academic Theatre to perform the opening concert of the 27th UC Cultural Week, Poesis et Symphonia.