Catholic University of Louvain

Catholic University of Louvain

https://uclouvain.be/en/

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The Université catholique de Louvain (also known as the Catholic University of Louvain, the English translation of its French name, and the University of Louvain, its official English name) is Belgium’s largest French-speaking university. It is located in Louvain-la-Neuve, which was expressly built to house the university, and Brussels, Charleroi, Mons, Tournai and Namur. Since September 2018, the university has used the branding UCLouvain, replacing the acronym UCL, following a merger with Saint-Louis University, Brussels.

The original University of Louvain (Universitas Lovaniensis) was founded at the centre of the historic town of Leuven (or Louvain) in 1425, making it the first university in Belgium and the Low Countries. After being closed in 1797 during the Napoleonic period, the Catholic University of Leuven was “re-founded” in 1834, and is frequently, but controversially, identified as a continuation of the older institution.AB In 1968 the Catholic University of Leuven split into the Dutch-language Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, which stayed in Leuven, and the French-language Université catholique de Louvain, which moved to Louvain-la-Neuve in Wallonia, 30 km southeast of Brussels. Since the 15th century, Leuven/Louvain, as it is still often called, has been a major contributor to the development of Catholic theology. The UCLouvain is often ranked among the world’s top 50 institutions for the study of philosophy and top 20 institutions for theology and religious studies.

The Catholic University of Leuven, based in Leuven (“Louvain” in French), 30 km east of Brussels, provided lectures in French from its refounding in 1835, and in Dutch from 1930. In 1968, the Dutch-language section became the independent Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, which remained in Leuven, while the French-speaking university was moved to a greenfield campus and town, Louvain-la-Neuve, 30 km south-east of Brussels, in a part of the country where French is the official language. This separation also entailed dividing existing library holdings between the two new universities.

With the democratization of university education already stretching existing structures, plans to expand the French-speaking part of the university at a campus in Brussels or Wallonia were quietly discussed from the early 1960s, but it was not anticipated that the French-speaking section would become an entirely independent university and lose all of its buildings and infrastructure in Leuven. The first stone of the new campus at Louvain-la-Neuve was laid in 1971, and the transfer of faculties to the new site was completed in 1979.

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