The seed that eventually grew into IULMA was the creation at the University of Alicante of a Research Unit called CETIVA [Spanish acronym for Centre for Industrial Terminology of the Autonomous Region of Valencia], by Enrique Alcaraz Varó, PhD who was the leader of a research group called “The Professional and Academic English” (Spanish acronym: IPA) wherein several especially relevant initiatives were carried out. Notable in this regard are the series of billingual dictionaries specialized in different professional areas developed within CETIVA and that have been further published by IULMA. These dictionaries range from Law to Economics, including Leisure, Tourism, Stock Exchange, Banking, Foreign Trade, Real Estate, Insurance, Linguistics, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Footwear, Natural Stone or Human Rights.
As a result of the important work carried out within CETIVA, an initiative arose to extend and broaden the experiences gathered to all modern languages at the Universities of Alicante, Castellón and Valencia, bringing together specialists from different fields of knowledge (Law, Economics, Pharmacy, Medicine, Computer Science, etc.) in what is now known as the Interuniversiy Institute for Applied Modern Languages (IULMA). After the corresponding legal proceedings and, having received endorsement from all the instances through which it has passed during the process, as well as a very positive evaluation from ANEP (Spanish acronym for National Agency for Assessment and Forecasting), on March 11th 2005 it was made public through the Official Journal of the Regional Government of Valencia, by means of Decree 55/2005 of the Regional Council, the creation of the Interuniversity Institute for Applied Modern Languages at present formed by three Valencian universities: the one in Alicante, Jaume I in Castellón and the one in Valencia for General Studies.
The three headquarters work in coordination in research within their fields of expertise, through a structure that is both inclusive and independent, in the organization of all kinds of academic events (seminars and conferences, both national and international), on agreements with public and private entities, in the provision of professional services in modern languages, both in terms of education and training as well as legal (forensic reports), economic, technological, etc. In this respect we can mention the different research projects granted by the Ministry of Education and Sciences on topics such as the creation of a terminology database for certain industrial sectors of the Autonomous Region of Valencia, the industrial language of the textile and toys industry, the ceramic tile industry from Castellón or intercultural communication and the language of business, to mention but a few. IULMA thus combines the efforts of a wide array of specialists in different languages, who are interested in the application of linguistics to the professional and academic environments in an effort to bring university and society closer together by offering the latter all the knowledge of university researchers and personnel.