Global South Fellowship to foster ground-breaking research in education, health, and sustainability

The University of Birmingham (UK) and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (USA) have jointly launched a Global South Fellowship.

Taking inspiration from successful fellowship programmes at both institutions, the Global South Fellowship will promote research collaboration and partnership development for early career researchers from countries within the Global South.

The two universities are accepting applications for the Fellowship – find out how to apply.

The Global South Fellowship is supported by funding from the Birmingham-Illinois Partnership for Discovery, Engagement & Education’s Signature Initiative. The Signature Initiative builds on the decade long collaboration and cognate research areas between the two institutions with the goal to add partners and organisations within the Global South as collaborators. In March 2024, both institutions announced $400,000 in funding for the BRIDGE Signature Initiative, which will support three major research projects in addition to the fellowship programme.

Three broad research topics were identified as the focus areas of the Strategic Initiative: global health, sustainability, and education access and equity. The research topics also emphasize the responsibility of higher education institutions to serve local and global communities.

“We very intentionally selected the focus areas of global health, sustainability, and education access and equity to align the BRIDGE Strategic Initiative with the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals,” said Professor Reitumetse Obakeng Mabokela, Associate Chancellor and Vice Provost for Global Affairs & Strategies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. "Seeking new discoveries to address these shared global challenges allows institutions of higher education to deliver on our promise to serve local and global communities.”

Birmingham and Illinois have been closely collaborating under the BRIDGE framework for more than a decade. The BRIDGE collaboration has yielded an impressive array of outcomes including 115 pairings of academics across all five Birmingham colleges and 13 colleges and schools and four research institutes at Illinois. More than $1.1 million has been invested in the partnership since March 2014, leading to an additional $5.4 million in external funding secured by BRIDGE collaborators.

Professor Robin Mason, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (International) at the University of Birmingham, commented: “Inspiration for our Global South Fellowship came, in part, from the University of Birmingham’s Brazil Visiting Fellows Scheme. This provides early career researchers working at recognized universities in Brazil the opportunity to spend up to three months at Birmingham carrying out identified research projects.

“We’re looking forward to developing mutually beneficial partnerships with researchers and their home institutions across the Global South that will enhance people’s lives by delivering innovative research in sustainability, education equity and global health.”