King's and Cornell welcomed 18 international university partners to London for the meeting
Last week, King's co-hosted the 2024 Cornell Global Hubs Network meeting alongside its strategic partner, Cornell University. This full-day event, led by the Global Engagement team at King's and the Office of the Vice Provost for International Affairs at Cornell, saw almost 100 representatives from 18 international university partners come together to explore innovative approaches and ways of working to deliver impact in education, research and society.
The Cornell Global Hubs Network is pioneering something really special, enabling us to collaborate across institutions and boundaries in response to some of the most immediate challenges that we face in the world. The discussions today have shown the importance of global research alliances that enable us to deliver impact to the communities that we serve, whether they are local, national or international.
Professor 'Funmi Olonisakin, Vice President (International, Engagement & Service)
The partners in attendance are all members of Cornell Global Hubs, a strategic network of global universities partnering with Cornell University to build transnational research and learning opportunities.
Senior representatives from universities across the world including from Ghana, India, Singapore and Thailand, among others, came together in the Great Hall for a series of interactive, action-oriented panels and break-out discussions, focusing on three key areas:
- strengthening impact locally and globally
- delivering innovative and impactful education opportunities
- enhancing research collaborations and leveraging external funding opportunities through the network.
Our Global Hubs partners are making a meaningful difference in the world. This is a momentous time and we are facing different kinds of challenges, but it's networks like this that will allow us to confront those challenges together.
Wendy Wolford, Vice Provost for International Affairs and Robert A. and Ruth E. Polson Professor of Global Development, Cornell University
The day concluded with a panel discussion in which alumni from King's, Cornell and the University of Edinburgh shared their perspectives on how universities can leverage international partnerships such as the Cornell Global Hubs network to support meaningful engagement with alumni communities and work together to address global challenges.
The 2024 Network meeting was the culmination of a two-day series of events in London co-hosted by Cornell and other UK Global Hub partners,. Representatives from King's Faculties of Life Sciences & Medicine and Social Science & Public Policy attended the Weill Cornell Medical Schools Network event at Queen Mary University of London, and the schedule also included an industry-academia roundtable on Sustainable Tourism hosted at the Science Gallery by King's Business School and the SC Johnson College of Business at Cornell. Industry speakers included Ufi Ibrahim, Founder and Chief Executive of the hospitality sector's Energy and Environment Alliance, who worked with King's Business School to co-create an Executive Education programme designed to equip senior leaders to tackle the industry's unique sustainability challenges.
King's and Cornell
King's and Cornell University have been institutional partners since 2014, and King's officially joined the Cornell Global Hubs network when it was launched in 2021. Since then, the Global Engagement team at King's have supported 11 research projects through the King's-Cornell Global Strategic Collaboration Awards, with another round of projects due to be funded later this year. This funding award provides the foundation to enable larger-scale research collaborations, including external grant applications and joint publications.
King's partnership with Cornell also supports King's mission of providing international and experiential learning opportunities for students. King's has a university-wide student exchange agreement, and in spring 2024 a group of Cornell students came to King's as part of a week-long study visit exploring Heat Waves and Global Health, working with students and staff from the Department of Global Health & Social Medicine.
About Global Engagement at King's
The Global Engagement team at King's, who are part of the International, Engagement & Service directorate, support King's engagement with the world, working with strategic university partners to enable the delivery of King's Education, Research and Service strategies.
They work in partnership with every region in the world, to nurture a portfolio of partnerships that provide a framework for student and academic mobility, engagement with local communities, impactful research, fulfilling the University's vision to produce 'knowledge with purpose'.
