Winners of the Global Partnership Seed Fund announced

Seven projects at City University of London have been awarded Global Partnership Seed Fund grants.

Launched in 2019 by the Office for Global Engagement, the funding scheme will support academics to develop partnerships with overseas universities through small grants of up to £5,000.

The funding grants will deepen and extend City’s global reach in different regions of the world.

There was huge interest in the funding programme from across all five Schools, with over 60 applications received in total.

Congratulations to the following winners:

Professor David Collins and Ben Robinson from the City Law School for collaboration with Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, to deliver legal advice via clinic sessions to start-up businesses and to collaborate on a project examining digital trade barriers for these enterprises in international treaties. The work will promote urban improvement and solutions to problems faced by cities, particularly under employment. Ryerson is a member of the WC2 network and the project will also benefit other members of the network via its business theme.

Dr Zahera Harb and Dr James Rodgers from the School of Arts and Social Sciences to set up an international network for journalism education that addresses the main challenges facing journalism today, such as responding to changes in the global political environment, and equip students to deal with them. The project will build on existing links with the Higher School of Economics in Moscow and the American University of Sharjah in UAE.

Dr Michael Garcia Ortiz, Dr Eduardo Alonso and Professor Nabil Aouf from the School of Mathematics, Computer Science and Engineering to develop partnerships with the Sony Computer Science Laboratories and Japanese Universities on artificial intelligence and robotics, including research on endowing a robot with learning capabilities akin to animals and humans.

Professor Rose McCabe from the School of Health Sciences who will conduct research on patient involvement in healthcare decisions with international experts on healthcare communication at universities in Brazil, China, Japan and the USA. Project participants will analyse verbal and non-verbal communication in videos recorded in real healthcare encounters across different cultural contexts.

Dr Sonia Falconieri and Chiara De Amicis from Cass Business School will work with Montpellier Business School on a comparative analysis of gender quota regulations and their effectiveness in Europe, looking at countries with mandatory quotas, such as France and Italy, versus those with voluntary quotas, such as the UK.

Professor Laura Empson from Cass Business School for work with the Copenhagen Business School to investigate the conditions under which employees and public organisations create social networks that contribute to skills transfer in the particular context of professional service firms. The project will explore how diversity can contribute to skills transfer without parallel groups emerging.

Dr Anna Isaacs from the Centre for Food Policy within the School of Health Sciences for collaboration on the prevention of obesity with the Global Obesity Centre at Deakin University in Australia. Both centres have similar objectives but different areas of methodological expertise which will contribute to a better understanding of the complex causes of obesity and approaches to prevention.