The activities of the Society have never been limited exclusively to its annual meetings, for another of its aims has always been to keep in close contact with all aspects of Catalan culture.
This end has been accomplished in various ways. The Society regards as of prime importance the promotion of exchanges between students and academics of both countries. One of the tasks of the ACS from its earliest times was to offer assistance to young Catalans who wished to pursue their studies in Britain. This was consolidated for a time in the form of an Annual Scholarship, the value of which was estimated to allow a young scholar to come for a stay of about one month in order to carry out a specific piece of research, preferably, but not necessarily, one with an ‘Anglo-Catalan’ theme.
In 1984 the Society also agreed to act as the agent of the Generalitat de Catalunya in Great Britain in the awarding of scholarships offered to young foreign scholars to enable them to pursue study in Catalonia. And following the attendance of the President of Catalonia, M. H. Sr Jordi Pujol, at the London meeting in 1988, the Batista i Roca scholarships were established, commemorating the life’s work of our main founder, and funded by the Generalitat de Catalunya.
These awards served to promote the exchange of Catalan and British scholars at post-graduate level in the fields of the Humanities and the Social Sciences. The scheme was run jointly by the Society and the Generalitat and began in 1991 with seven scholars, rising to ten the following year. More recently, the scholarship was re-launched as a project grant in order to be able to support a wider range of researchers. The posthumous endowment of a Catalan Visiting Fellowship by Dr Batista himself at Fitzwilliam College also helped to strengthen the Catalan presence at Cambridge.