University of Pau and Adour Country

On 17 December 1970, a presidential decree formalised the creation of the Université de Pau et des Pays de l'Adour (UPPA), comprising the three existing Teaching and Research Units, in Law and Economics, in Arts and Humanities and in Exact and Natural Sciences, as well as a new one : a University Institute for Scientific Research (Institut Universitaire de Recherche Scientifique, IURS). This new UER was meant to consolidate the management of all research activities carried out at this new University of Pau. However, in reality, research groups in Law and Economics remained dependent on their own UER. In 1970, an Institute for Legal Studies and Economics (Institut d'Etudes Juridiques et Economiques, IEJE) was created in Bayonne, following the suggestion of the Bayonne-Anglet-Biarritz District (BAB) and a decision taken by the University Board.The UPPA has its root in a local university history dating back to the XVIth century, with the creation of a Collège des Arts (an institute for Humanities) in 1549, and then of the third protestant academy in Europe in 1564, which in 1583 was established as a University. The University was done away with when the Béarn region was incorporated into France in 1620. A century later, in 1722, a new Universitas Bearniae was created. It was first comprised of a Faculty of Arts and Humanities and a Faculty of Law, to which a Faculty of Theology was added in 1780. This University disappeared during the French Revolution, in 1792.