Facilitated and chaired by: Dr Julie Reeves who is the co-convenor of the Postgraduate Issues Network. For more details about the network and its activities, please click here.

International research partnerships and collaborations have long been part of the higher education landscape, yet little is known about the impact of these kinds of relationships on the researchers involved or how we might leverage and share talent internationally.  As Silke Blohm has commented, ‘we know more about transnational education than we do about transnational research’. This webinar offers presentations from three very different perspectives on international collaborations.  The presenters will share insights from their rich range of experiences, including international programmes, the impact of consortia, and the collaborative pooling of resources.

This webinar is ideal for researchers at all career stages, doctoral supervisors, academic research leaders, researcher developers and professional staff with an interest in international research collaborations and leveraging these to benefit and support PGRs, ECRs, and future research leaders.

Schedule

Speaker bios

Dr Dawn Duke is Head of Programmes for African Research Excellence Fund (AREF). She oversees AREF’s professional development programmes for postdoctoral researchers in Africa, supporting researchers’ transition to independence. Before joining AREF, she was Head of Researcher Development and Engagement at the University of Surrey, supporting doctoral and early career researchers throughout their career journeys and providing supervisor training. Dawn received her Neuroscience PhD from Imperial College. In 2008, she moved from researching and teaching neuroscience to concentrate fully on supporting the professional development of researchers.  She has a wide range of experience in designing, delivering and strategically leading professional/career development programmes for early career researchers, as well as research supervisors in the UK, Europe and Africa. Dawn is dedicated to supporting the next generation of researcher leaders to take on the challenge of utilising their amazing talent to address the complex problems facing our world today and in the future.

Dr Taghreed El Hajj is a Postdoctoral Research Associate and Knowledge Exchange Officer at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), with over 17 years of research and programmatic experience in the field of ‘Public Health’. She worked with academic and international organisations both in the UK and abroad. Her research focuses on sociological and public health issues, with expertise in qualitative methods, research uptake, capacity strengthening, community health, and advocacy for policy change. She worked on a range of research topics including gender-related issues, tuberculosis, sexual health and rights, HIV-related stigma, mental health promotion among young refugees, and tobacco- control. She holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Leicester and a Master of Public Health (MPH) from the American University of Beirut, specialising in health promotion and community health.

Dr Mike Rose is the Faculty Funding Officer for Faculteit de Letteren, University of Groningen. The common thread through various roles at UK Universities has been ECR and PGR development, especially in academic writing and impact. Recent publications include "Person, context and judgement: Exploring the potential of a theoretical model describing the role of information and communication technology in the doctoral research process" (AJET 2023) with Sarah Stein and Kwong Nui Sim, and Anglo-Dutch Connections in the Early Modern World (Routledge 2022) with Sjoerd Levelt and Esther van Raamsdonk. If you're not careful he will recruit you for 23 Things International, or worse, talk to you about poetry.