University wins three British Council grants

The Going Global Partnerships Programme is a British Council initiative that helps connect Universities around to world to collaborate.

This year the University of Reading was successful in winning funding for three new initiatives.

As part of the UK-China Humanities Alliance, which includes top institutions in China and the UK, Professor Lúcia Nagib from Film Theatre and Television successfully won funding for the project ‘(Re-)connecting Research in China’, alongside University of Exeter, King’s College London and University of Manchester. On the Reading side, it will fund a workshop on intermedia/interarts, looking at cultural and aesthetic exchanges between scholars and industry practitioners in China and the UK. Outputs include screenings and performances for the general public and bringing proceedings and commissioned papers together into an edited book. 

As part of the UK-China Joint Institutes Alliance (JIA) and our work in Jiangsu province with NUIST and the NUIST-Reading academy, we successfully won Enabling Grants to Strengthen UK-China Institutional Partnerships through academic collaboration as part of the consortium bid to the British Council by the UK-China JIA. The funding will support the development of EAP (English for Academic Purposes) assessment literacy for China-UK partnerships. The Project will be led by Professor Elisabeth Wilding from ISLI (International Study and Language Institute), and will involve colleagues from our University and the University of Kent from the UK, and Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology (NUIST) and Xi'an Jiaotong Liverpool University (XJTLU) in China.

The third successful bid was to become part of the Thai-UK World Class University Consortium. Alongside Mahidol University, who are ranked second in Thailand, Dr Sarah Cardey from Agriculture, Policy and Development will support collaborative activities in social development and global development, looking to develop new programmes and research projects. As a member of this consortium, the University of Reading will use its global network to help make Thailand’s universities globally competitive and will address the shared challenges of quality, inclusion and internationalisation. We have recently established new partnerships with four leading Thai universities and this successful bid will help us continue building our profile in the region. 

These bids are very competitive and often include interest from across the UK. To be successful in three is a huge achievement and continues to raise the University of Reading’s presence around the world.