University of Birmingham (UK) and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (USA)
The University of Birmingham (UK) and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (USA) have jointly launched a Global South Fellowship.
Taking inspiration from successful fellowship programs at both institutions, the Global South Fellowship will promote research collaboration and partnership development for early career researchers from countries within the Global South.
The two universities are accepting applications for the Fellowship – further information can be found athttps://bridgepartnership.org/fellowships/global-south-fellowship/
The Global South Fellowship is supported by funding from the Birmingham-Illinois Partnership for Discovery, Engagement & Education’s Signature Initiative. The Signature Initiative builds on the decade long collaboration and cognate research areas between the two institutions with the goal to add partners and organisations within the Global South as collaborators. In March 2024, both institutions announced $400,000 in funding for the BRIDGE Signature Initiative, which will support three major research projects in addition to the fellowship programme.
Three broad research topics were identified as the focus areas of the Strategic Initiative: global health, sustainability, and education access and equity. The research topics also emphasize the responsibility of higher education institutions to serve local and global communities.
“We very intentionally selected the focus areas of global health, sustainability, and education access and equity to align the BRIDGE Strategic Initiative with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals,” said Professor Reitumetse Obakeng Mabokela, Associate Chancellor and Vice Provost for Global Affairs & Strategies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “Seeking new discoveries to address these shared global challenges allows institutions of higher education to deliver on our promise to serve local and global communities.”
Birmingham and Illinois have been closely collaborating under the BRIDGE framework for more than a decade. The BRIDGE collaboration has yielded an impressive array of outcomes including 115 pairings of academics across all five Birmingham colleges and 13 colleges and schools and four research institutes at Illinois. More than $1.1 million has been invested in the partnership since March 2014, leading to an additional $5.4 million in external funding secured by BRIDGE collaborators.
Professor Robin Mason, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (International) at the University of Birmingham, commented: “Inspiration for our Global South Fellowship came, in part, from the University of Birmingham’s Brazil Visiting Fellows Scheme. This provides early career researchers working at recognized universities in Brazil the opportunity to spend up to three months at Birmingham carrying out identified research projects.
“We’re looking forward to developing mutually beneficial partnerships with researchers and their home institutions across the Global South that will enhance people’s lives by delivering innovative research in sustainability, education equity and global health.”
ENDS
For more information, please contact Press Office, University of Birmingham, tel: +44 (0)121 414 2772: email:pressoffice@contacts.bham.ac.uk
Notes to editor:
- The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the world’s top 100 institutions. Its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers, teachers and more than 8,000 international students from over 150 countries.
- The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign ranks consistently among the top 50 higher education institutions world-wide, and is currently ranked #4 in the area of Engineering/Technology and Computer Sciences in the 2015 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU). Many of the technologies that enabled the modern electronic era were developed at the U of I, and the university has lead the nation in NSF R&D awards for the last five years running. Illinois at is currently home to more than 10,000 international students and more than 2,000 international faculty and visiting scholars.