On Wednesday 20 May 2009 signed a cooperation agreement to create the Professorship "Pablo Neruda about chilean poetry", an initiative that aims to establish a space research, teaching, extension and dissemination of the poetry of Pablo Neruda, in particular, and chilean poetry in general, promoting the development of these areas and contribute to enhancing the academic and cultural activity. This new professorship of the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities at the University of Chile and the Pablo Neruda Foundation, aims to create an instance of cultivation and study of poetry.

In the words of Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities, Jorge Hidalgo, the initiative of the Pablo Neruda  Foundation is an important gesture for the national cultural heritage as "keep a professorship that is a standing invitation to senior figures of diferent points to think and teach courses about Pablo Neruda, we believe is a high noble task that we applaud". He further stated that engage in or provide a critical space to the great chilean academics is a task that falls to foundations such as Neruda and the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities, the task of extending the memory of Pablo Neruda, research about the poet and the contribution which must necessarily have this activity with teaching, "where many of our students will benefit from this iniciative"

A permanent seminar

For his part, the president of the Pablo Neruda Foundation, Juan Agustín Figueroa, feels that the creation of this professorship will contribute minimally to settle the great debt we owe to the chilean poet, Pablo Neruda, because he always felt himself a "son of the University of Chile ", and he proved to be academic in the Faculty of Arts, at the time, and donating their most precious treasures: the collection of shells and their personal library. In his words, the professorship should not be regarded only as a place of learning, so "as a great permanent workshop", like a nursery, and that "this initiative will multiply other genres, other talents, so chilean poetry continues to flourish. "

This new professorship will be a boost to the creation of seminars and related events to be established as a new channel of liaison and coordination with civil society and foreign institutions, regional and national. In addition, during the year, two scholarships awarded for the development of a thesis on the poetry of Neruda at the graduate level, both master's and doctoral programs.

In 2009 the Professorship financed the trip of Professor Greg Dawes, of the University of North Carolina, author of a recent book on Neruda entitled "Verses againts Darkness", to visit the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities and the three museum houses of Pablo Neruda.

Also, the signing of cooperation agreement will allow the publication of a series of studies on the poetry of Pablo Neruda, as a special issue of the Chilean Literature Magazine, internationally indexed.