Full Program »
Innovative approaches to International Collaboration: the Birmingham-Nottingham Alliance, 2010-2015
Universities are increasingly turning to international partnerships as a way to enhance their research impact and extend their global reach. At the heart of every partnership involving higher educational institutions lies an implicit tension between the need to compete with each other - for the best and brightest students, research funds and access to industrial sponsorship - and the desire to collaborate for mutual benefit. One might expect this tension to be particularly prominent in partnerships involving universities from the same country, especially those sharing the same size, scale and ambition. This session looks at how the Universities of Birmingham and Nottingham in the United Kingdom have sought to develop partnerships with Brazil based on a form of 'competitive cooperation'; one that has brought added value to both institutions, while leaving fully open the avenues for individual institutional partnership and research priorities.The Birmingham-Nottingham relationship is unique in the UK context, and has been cited as a model of engagement.
As two of the UK's leading, research-intensive UK universities, the Birmingham-Nottingham partnership boasts an annual turnover of over £1 billion, an annual research income in excess of £300 million and an impressive global footprint through Nottingham's two campuses in China and Malaysia, Birmingham's Guangzhou Centre, and a suite of regional offices in Delhi, Shanghai, Santa Catarina, Nigeria, Ghana and Brussels.
The session will outline the origins and key features of the relationship as it has developed since its inception in 2011, and will highlight the mechanisms the two institutions have worked through to promote genuine collaboration.
It will explore two specific areas where the universities have sought to harmonise their interests and develop a common strategy. The first section will look at their collaborative approach to partnership development and activities in Brazil, an approach that has aimed to facilitate relations with potential collaborators in the fields of primary research, teaching-partnerships and knowledge transfer activities.
The second will share the Universities' experience in running joint programmes, along with an evaluation of the challenges and opportunities involved in collaborating at this level. In both sections, the discussion will focus on the 'lessons learnt' from the partnership.
A Brazilian perspective on the partnership and approach will be provided by UNESP, one of Birmingham and Nottingham's leading Brazilian partners. The session will explore how this type of collaboration might be relevant to the Brazilian context, both as a model for institutional integration within Brazil, and as a template for promoting engagement with universities outside the country.
Author(s):
Andrea Edwards
University of Birmingham
United Kingdom
Neville Wylie
University of Nottingham
United Kingdom
Carlos Eduardo Vergani
UNESP - Univ. Estadual Paulista
Brazil