Policy Brief – “Trying to be better partners: A roadmap”

This policy brief presents key findings from a review of research development processes and approaches to partnerships building completed at SOAS in 2020.

Like other universities, SOAS successfully received GCRF QR funding in order to implement its GCRF Strategy, identifying specific outcomes for the period 2018-2020. The internal review was conducted in order to facilitate the implementation of these objectives, which included improving SOAS’ research development policies and practices to respond better to the diverse needs of partners in Africa and Asia. The research comprised of 27 interviews with staff in the pre- and post-award teams, Contracts, Finance and HR, Project Managers, Principal Investigators and some of their research partners overseas and investigated barriers related to finance, contracts and compliance in international collaborative research faced in-house and in partner countries, explored current approaches to partnerships building and identified possible improvements and good practices.

The research was led by Dr Romina Istratii in her role as GCRF Project Officer and was overseen by the then Director of Research and Enterprise Dr Alex Lewis. The policy brief can be found at the link: https://eprints.soas.ac.uk/33497/