New Chair and Vice-Chair elected for the Arqus Student’s Council

The Arqus Student’s Council renews its presidency and vice-presidency. Duarte Lopes, president of the Academic Union of the University of Minho (AAUMinho) has been elected chair and Dominyka Goldbergaitė, student of journalism at Vilnius University, is the new vice-chair of this board. The election took place at the second Arqus Annual Conference in Padua.

The Arqus Alliance involves around 350,000 students from all its university members. The Student’s Council merges many different cultures of student representation and that is what makes the Council a versatile student advocacy body with great potential to contribute to the main goals of Arqus – excellence, multiculturalism and transformational actions.

The team, chaired by Duarte, will keep working to increase the involvement of Arqus students and their active participation in the Council’s decision-making processes on the Alliance’s objectives, challenges and activities. According to Duarte, the main aim is to maintain and intensify a bottom-up model in the board’s dynamics, fostering the student input in the consolidation of the Arqus community.

Duarte Lopes was born in Braga (Portugal) and is 22 years old. He has a degree in Law and is a master’s student in Contracts and Company Law, both at the University of Minho, where he is a member of the General Council and was a member of the Academic Senate. Lopes was also on the board of the Law Students’ Union and the Academic Debates’ Union of this University. He has been president of the AAUMinho since January, after having been its internal and external deputy president and director of nuclei, sections and delegations.

Dominyka Goldbergaitė was born in Trakai (Lithuania) and is 21 years old. She is a 3rd-year bachelor’s student at the Communication Faculty, where she is the chair of student representation since 2021 May.

News prepared by Duarte Lopes, chair of the Arqus Student’s Council.