Facilitating university research partnerships across continents

Intercultural support for transient project communities in the UK-Japanese RENKEI network

Reading by Spencer Hazel, Reader in Applied Linguistics at Newcastle University, and currently UK Chair for the RENKEI network.

Abstract

RENKEI (from Japanese 連携, cooperation, alignment) refers to the Research and Education Network for Knowledge Economy Initiatives. It is a consortium of 12 research-intensive universities, six from the UK, and six from Japan, with its secretariat located at the British Council in Japan. The network was established in 2012 to engender closer research collaboration between member universities across the two countries. This has been pursued especially by providing opportunities for early career researchers and more senior mentors to meet in person so that they can explore overlapping research interests, to develop ideas for future collaborative research projects and funding opportunities. In recent years, spotlight themes for research collaboration have included climate change and healthy ageing.

This talk reports on current work to facilitate this network and those involved in RENKEI partnerships, by providing intercultural communication training and consultancy work. Where previously it was deemed enough to get people into a room together, there is increased awareness that for these collaborations to flourish, support must be provided that enables these initial meetings to develop into longer-term relationships. This includes developing a cross-cultural perspective (awareness of differences between the two settings in question) and intercultural communicative competence more generally (an ability to act within any such environment). To facilitate this, a training package is being adopted within the network, drawing on insights from the Transient Multilingual Communities project.