Ambassador hosts academics event
- Ambassador Laura Popescu hosted an event bringing Romanian academics and researchers from Bucharest, Cluj, Timișoara, Iași and Constanța together. (x.com) - The gathering featured university delegates across major Romanian research hubs, signalling outreach to the academic community. (x.com) - The event's social posts emphasise networking and collaboration between Romania's central universities and the embassy. (x.com)
Romania’s ambassador to the United Kingdom, Laura Popescu, hosted a London gathering that brought Romanian academics and researchers into one room on September 16, 2024. (unibuc.ro) The Romanian Embassy in London said the meeting was designed to connect Romanian scholars working in Britain with one another and with universities back in Romania. The event was part of a wider embassy series aimed at professional communities in the Romanian diaspora in the United Kingdom. (unibuc.ro) One named participant was Marian Preda, rector of the University of Bucharest, who attended in his role leading one of Romania’s biggest universities. The university said he used the meeting to pitch research fellowships and visiting-professor programs run through the University of Bucharest Research Institute. (unibuc.ro) The embassy outreach lands in a country where Romania has one of its largest diaspora communities. Popescu said in an August 2023 interview that Romanian citizens had made 1.47 million applications to the United Kingdom’s European Union Settlement Scheme, with 1,136,100 approved at that point. (basilica.ro) In the same interview, Popescu said Romanian may be the third most spoken language in England and Wales, citing the 2021 census, and described London as a city with a large Romanian population. That gives the embassy a large pool of teachers, researchers and students to organize around. (basilica.ro) Popescu has led Romania’s embassy in London since 2021, according to Romania’s Foreign Ministry listings and the United Kingdom government’s register of foreign embassies. Those official directories still list her as ambassador as of April 2026. (mae.ro, gov.uk) The September 2024 event did not come with announced funding, policy changes or signed agreements in the public material that surfaced afterward. What it did produce was a formal embassy venue for Romanian academics in Britain to meet senior university leadership from home. (unibuc.ro) That makes the meeting less a standalone ceremony than a piece of diaspora diplomacy: an embassy using its London post to keep Romanian research networks tied to Bucharest. (unibuc.ro, basilica.ro)
