Following a university-wide call, the International Relations Office is pleased to announce that 30 research projects and 17 PhD students were awarded funds in our 2018/2019 International Funding Schemes.

The Schemes support collaborative research and the development of strategic networks with international partners, and enable doctoral mobility.

This year’s call focused on projects that add value to existing partnerships; develop networks with Europe; and build multi-partner projects around global challenges. The Future Research Leaders strand offered grants for PhD students wishing to undertake short-term international research visits.

Reviewing a large number of high-quality proposals, the panel was chaired by Professor Jeremy Bradshaw, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (International and Doctoral), and included Professor Jonathan Knight, Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Research), Professor Catherine Montgomery, Academic Director of International Partnerships, and Professor Cathryn Mitchell, Academic Director of the Doctoral College.

15 Bath PhD students have been awarded funding for international visits of up to six months, hosted by institutions including the Eindhoven University of Technology, the University of California, and the University of São Paolo. Bath will also be welcoming 3 visiting PhD students from Georgia Institute of Technology (Mechanical Engineering) and from two Indian Institutes of Technology, ITT Bombay (Mathematics) and ITT Mandi (Biology & Biochemistry).

We are funding 9 projects that aim to strengthen our existing partner engagement, 13 projects that will develop our European links, and 8 projects that will build partnerships around global challenges, working with institutions such as the Stellenbosch University, the World Health Organisation and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Professor Barbara Kasprzyk-Holdern (Chemistry) and her team will further research with the Stellenbosch Water Centre on public health in Southern Africa, developing an early-warning system for water quality in the context of Cape Town’s severe water shortages and the environmental impact of rural water trading and translocation.

European projects include a partner symposium with the University of Oslo, which will be organised by the Milner Centre for Evolution/Centre for Mathematical Biology to identify joint research and mobility opportunities.

Developing Bath’s partnership with the World Health Organisation, Dr Nick Townsend in the Department of Health will explore new ways to measure how policies on Non-communicable diseases in Europe are implemented.

In the Department of Education, Dr Nicola Savvides will research student political identities with colleagues at KU Leuven and the University of Groningen.

Highlighting Bath’s engagement in Asia, the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPR) will be working with colleagues at Yonsei University to explore comparative perspectives on welfare state reforms in the UK and South Korea; while the Centre for Death & Society (CDAS) aims to build a transnational research hub on death and dying, bringing together expertise from the UK, China and the Pacific Rim. Tsinghua University will be a partner for Dr Stijn Wuyts’ team in the Department of Physics, who will be undertaking research at astronomical observatories in China to reveal the dust-enshrouded nature of star-forming galaxies.

Find out more about this year’s awards: