Year: 2026
Type: dissertation
Abstract: The European Higher Education Area (EHEA) has promoted university cooperation, internationalisation, and the harmonisation of European higher education. However, its multilingual and multicultural context poses communication challenges. Effective terminology management is essential for clear information dissemination and institutional communication. Despite academia’s international nature, little attention has been paid to developing terminology resources in these settings. An exception is the Arqus Termbase (ATB), a normative and harmonising terminology resource created by the Arqus European University Alliance (AA) to support inter-university collaboration. This initiative includes a terminology management protocol and a prototype multilingual database based on the TBX standard. The main objective of this doctoral research is to strengthen and enrich the conceptual structure of the ATB. To this end, the study proposes the development of the EuroScholar Ontology (EuSO) and the validation of a suitable methodology. Therefore, this thesis focused on the teaching, learning, and research process within the context of European higher education. The methodology used is both onomasiological and semasiological, partially based on the model proposed by Losey-León and Corpas-Pastor (2023). It includes six stages: (1) domain delimitation, (2) terminology selection, (3) conceptualisation, (4) formalisation and implementation, (5) expert validation, and (6) improvement, updating and maintenance. The initial development of the EuSO has produced several key outcomes. It has provided a thorough identification and formalisation of concepts, relations, and attributes relevant to higher education. As part of this effort, new concepts have been identified, along with definitions for classes, relations, and attributes. Furthermore, many conceptual relations and attributes were formalised. To systematise this information, conceptual hierarchy templates were created, and the ontology was validated by experts, leading to further refinements. Its future implementation will significantly improve the ATB and provide a clearer, more detailed structure. It expands categories, fills conceptual gaps, and better organises key aspects of teaching, learning, and research. It will also enhance ATB entries with new concepts, definitions, and additional information such as relations, attributes, contexts, and visual representations. Overall, the EuSO will improve the clarity, accuracy, and usefulness of ATB within the context of European higher education.
Author: Castillo Pérez, Esther
Language: Spanish
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7171476764