Is there any dedicated, academic channel i could use to establish contact with other universities on an international scale? I'm a doctoral student at the fine arts faculty of the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Spain (European Union), in the Art and Technology department, and i have a question about the elaboration of my thesis that you might be able to help me with.

To acquire a sizable part of the information needed to conduct my research, i need to establish contact with forty two universities spread across the globe, mostly to conduct interviews in text, audio and video formats about culture, art, and technology.

I already asked both my thesis directors and faculty administrators about what the best way to contact this universities would be, but they have been unable to offer me a proper answer so far. I could contact them with my personal university email, but i still think that it would be more appropriate to do so trough a dedicated channel, but i wonder about the existence of a dedicated, international channel that i could use to do so in a more formal way.

To recap, my question would be as follows:


As a doctoral student and citizen of the European Union, is there any dedicated, preferably free of charge, academic channel i could use to establish contact with other universities on an international scale?


Thanks a lot for your time.

Martin
Summarizing the comments: the primary form of communication and dissemination of information among academics is e-mail, for better or worse.  But perhaps more towards what your end goal might be, a Slack channel might be appropriate.  You will still need to solicit participants via e-mail and advertising on ResearchGate or listservs dedicated to your research field.  But once you get a core group, you can put everyone on Slack and give them admin permissions to add additional participants as the group grows.