The international activities of the department are aimed at developing and cooperating with foreign universities and research institutions. Every year, international relations are expanding and changing, and the directions of interaction with the international community are changing in accordance with current and urgent scientific issues. The department’s activities in the international sphere are carried out in the following areas:

• participation in European educational programmes and other grant activities;
• cooperation with foreign educational institutions;
• advanced training of teachers and scientific internships for postgraduate students;
• international publications of teachers and students, etc.

In 2012-2015, the Department took part in the TEMPUS educational programme, namely in the CENEAST project – Reforming Urban Planning Programmes in the Eastern Neighbourhood. Within the framework of the programme, in cooperation with leading European universities (Vilnius Gediminas Technical University (Lithuania), Alma Mater Studiorum – University of Bologna (Italy), Salford University (UK), Tallinn University of Technology (Estonia), etc.), the department’s curricula were reformed and modern methodological support for the new discipline “Environmentally Sustainable Urban Development” was developed.

The participation of the department in the ERASMUS+ educational programme provides for academic mobility to European universities that provide educational services for the training of applicants in related specialities. Thus, Associate Professor Pitak I.V. delivered a number of lectures on environmental issues for students of the Faculty of Chemical Technology (Department of Engineering Ecology) of Kaunas University of Technology.

The main focus of the department’s grant activity in 2018 was the project “Inclusion in Cooperation”, which was funded by the British Council in Ukraine. The important social significance of the project brought together teachers, postgraduate students and students studying in the department’s specialities to implement it. The result of this project was the arrangement of the territory of boarding schools where people with disabilities live and the creation of zones of psycho-emotional comfort.

In 2020/2021, teachers and students of the department became partners in the implementation of a grant application from the Press, Education and Culture Section of the US Embassy in Ukraine “Best Educational Practices for Hearing Impaired Learners”.

Since 2016, the department has been fruitfully cooperating with the Pomeranian Academy in Słupsk (Poland), which provides students of the speciality 101 “Ecology” with the opportunity to integrate into the European educational space, learn the culture of the country, study Polish and, if desired, English and German. Training is carried out on the principle of academic mobility during the semester in the field of Environmental Protection and provides for the coherence of the subjects studied by students. In addition, the Department’s cooperation with the Academy extends to the participation of the Department’s lecturers and postgraduate students in a series of online lectures conducted by leading world experts under the “A+ Lecture” programme organised by the Academy under the “Active University” project.

In recent years, teachers have been upgrading their qualifications remotely in the form of foreign internships. Thus, in 2021-2022, at the Jagiellonian University (Krakow, Poland), the international programme “Fundraising and organisation of project activities in educational institutions: European experience” by Associate Professor Tikhomirova T.S., Associate Professor Filenko O.M. and Associate Professor Babenko V.M. In addition, Associate Professor Babenko V.M. improved his professional qualifications by participating in a series of seminars from Clarivate Ukraine on the search and use of world information resources in scientific and educational activities.

Scientific internships for teachers and postgraduate students of the Department are an important component of the Department’s international activities, which are implemented in various forms. For example, Iryna Yermakovych, while studying for her PhD, completed a research internship at the laboratory of the Institute for Combustion of Aerothermal Reactivity and the Environment (ICARE-CNRS), Orleans, France. Also, under the Swedish Institute’s Wisby Grant Programme, she completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Centre for Analysis and Synthesis at Lund University, one of the oldest universities in Northern Europe and a prestigious global educational institution, and at the Department of the School of Education and Environment at Kristianstad University (Sweden). At present, Associate Professor Pitak I.V. is undergoing a research internship in Environmental Engineering at the Lithuanian Energy Institute, the topic of which relates to an urgent environmental problem.

In recent years, the department’s faculty and postgraduate students have published a large number of papers in international journals, including those included in the Scopus science-based databases. Also, every year, teachers, postgraduates and students submit abstracts (about 40) to international scientific conferences.

Over the past two years, the Department’s lecturers have been speakers at the XVIII and XIX International School-Seminar “Modern Pedagogical Technologies in Education”, which is a new and interesting area of activity.

The international activity of the department is reflected in the involvement of students in international research projects and events. In 2019, students Diana Krutous, Yulia Gadaieva, Iryna Shcherbina, and Alina Guryeva took part in and received certificates in the international project “UPSHIFT Ukraine”, which was implemented under the auspices of UNICEF. Students of the department also take part in the events of the World Science Festival, become volunteers and coordinators of international projects, for example, “World up cleaning day”.

In the summer of 2022, Yulia Gadaieva, a master’s student of the department, received a grant to study at the Summer School of Ecology and Economics in Vienna, Austria. For three weeks, Yulia has been mastering the tools of effective financial policy at various levels of sustainable community development management.