History

InterRed has its origins in the joint work carried out between 2021 and 2022 by the Inter-American Organization for Higher Education (OUI), the Instituto Interuniversitario de Investigación Educativa (IESED-Chile) and the Laboratoire interdisciplinaire de recherche sur l’enseignement supérieur (LIRES), within the project “Experiencias de aseguramiento de la calidad en la educación superior en Quebec y Chile”, funded by Quebec’s Ministère des Relations internationales et de la Francophonie.

That experience laid the groundwork for a broader project. In May 2023, during the Acfas Congress in Montreal, Canada, Jacqueline Rojas, researcher at IESED-Chile and faculty member of the Faculty of Education Sciences at Universidad de Playa Ancha (Chile); Fernando Daniels, Director of Planning and Development at the OUI; and Olivier Bégin-Caouette, Director of LIRES and faculty member of the Faculty of Education at the Université de Montréal (Canada), shaped the idea of creating a research and advanced training network on higher education.

The proposal gained momentum thanks to the support of Óscar Garrido, Rector of Universidad de Los Lagos, and of Daniel López Stefoni, then Director of IESED-Chile, together with the OUI’s work to bring in other institutions interested in strengthening advanced training and research on higher education in the Americas. That same year, during the eighth Congress of the Americas on International Education (CAEI), held in Las Vegas, United States, the founding members agreed to form the network.

After almost three years of joint work, at the network’s meeting held in October 2025 during the CAEI in Costa Rica, it was decided to formalise its existence through a Memorandum of Understanding, whose signing was completed in June 2026.