GCRF Development Award Reimagining the University: Supporting the Role of Universities in Conflict and Crisis

The aims of the Development Award are to build equitable and sustainable partnerships, support capability development, and bring together expertise across universities, disciplines and sectors to support a full stage Network Plus bid, and other future activities. It will also manage the transition between an existing AHRC Network grant ending in July 2020, Pedagogies for Peacebuilding, and a new Network. Ultimately, the aim of the Network is to evidence and enhance the capacity of universities - through engagement with schools, teaching and student support, and action research, knowledge creation and intellectual leadership - to respond to contemporary conflicts and crises. There is consensus among academics, donors, governments and inter-governmental agencies that universities can play unique and diverse roles in conflict prevention and resolution, and that this role remains poorly understood and under-explained.

The Development Award is led by a team which is inter-disciplinary, integrating insights from politics, conflict management, education, environment, development studies and communication studies. It is also multi-institutional, featuring a collaboration between two UK-based ROs, (York and IDS, Sussex) and 5 partner 'Hub' universities: Chiang Mai (Thailand); Los Andes (Colombia); Makerere (Uganda); University of Rwanda; and the University of the Western Cape (South Africa). The Hub universities have played a leading national and regional role in responding to very different conflicts, as sites of pedagogy and training, dialogue, partnership, and intervention. The country cases, as a set, provide a spectrum of conflicts and contexts for comparison (authoritarian rule, elements of fragility, complex transitions, changing nature of conflicts over time, 'post' conflict violence, etc.).

The Development Award envisages an interlinked set of activities. To build equitable and sustainable partnerships, four sets of activities are planned. First, face to face meetings (York, IDS) will enhance partnership development across all partners, and regionally in Africa (Cape Town). These meetings will ensure that Network activities are challenge-led and locally responsive. Second, a knowledge exchange fund will facilitate knowledge transfer and the sharing of learning across country contexts, with priority given to Southern scholars. Third, stakeholder mapping and partnership development events will enhance the partnerships of Hub universities in-country and regionally across disciplines and sectors. Fourth, translation of core resources, such as a leaflet about the Network and select website pages, into local languages will ensure that partnerships and outreach do not exclude non-English speakers.

Capability development will be delivered in part through face to face meetings e.g. training and the co-design of theories of change. Further support will be provided through a series of training webinars (on ethics, impact, equitable partnerships, due diligence, action research), while early career researchers will be mentored to conduct baselines studies (mapping potential academic and non-academic partners; identifying university-specific resources on conflict; and documenting university policies on access and participation). The researchers recruited to undertake these studies will form the leadership group of a new early career researcher network on universities and conflict. To enhance capability, funding support is also provided to partner universities to support aspects of due diligence, such as the collation of information and document translation.

Learning from the Development Award will be captured on an ongoing basis e.g. through blogs, and resources such as the baseline studies and website will provide a sustainable legacy. Future planning is integrated throughout the 12 months of the Development Award, with activities designed to support the full stage Network Plus bid and other funding applications.