Carolina, Queen’s cultivate a global partnership
July 24, 2024UNC Global Affairs
At UNC Global Affairs, we spot opportunities. Opportunities to innovate, to inspire. To deepen relationships with trusted partners and collaborators, into unfamiliar territories, with people and institutions who have similar values and shared goals. We spot opportunities to pursue global solutions to some of the most pressing challenges of our time.
Global partnerships are fundamental to Carolina’s position as a leading public university. International collaboration ensures our faculty, staff and students navigate the complexities of a 21st century world, tapping into knowledge and opportunities that enhance and embolden — not burden or stifle — our teaching and research. Working alongside global collaborators helps us pursue effective solutions to the world’s grand challenges.
Healthy partnerships — like any collaboration — are built on shared values, mutual respect and aligned vision. At UNC-Chapel Hill, we have many examples of healthy partnerships, thriving over many years. We’re continually investing in these high-impact, highly productive partnerships, and we’re often looking for universities to collaborate with that demonstrate clear potential for success.
One example is Queen’s University Belfast (QUB or, simply, Queen’s). Founded in 1845, QUB is a leading university in the United Kingdom and a top research-intensive university in the UK, according to the Russell Group. The university’s Strategy 2030 aspires for QUB “to be a global research-intensive university, generating internationally leading research coupled with outstanding teaching and learning, focused on the needs of our society, locally and globally.”
At Carolina, we see overlapping values, goals and strengths with QUB.
Multilayered connections
While our universities have embraced several formal, written agreements for many years, we have found new energy with this partnership. Several in-person visits, virtual collaborations and overlapping interests have fueled this momentum.
It doesn’t hurt that Barbara Stephenson, vice provost for global affairs and chief global officer, has a deep, personal affinity for the people of Northern Ireland, after serving as U.S. Consul General in Belfast in the early 2000s, while in the U.S. Foreign Service. This past spring, I accompanied her to Belfast, as she spoke alongside Sir Hugh Orde, at the “In Conversation” event on “Policing and Politics in Divided Societies.” Stephenson and Orde spoke candidly and affectionately about their time supporting and managing police reform in post-conflict Northern Ireland.
This trip was also an opportunity to reconnect with QUB administrators and faculty to continue developing this emerging partnership. That’s often how partnerships grow.
Faculty champions
Committed and engaged faculty members undergird global partnerships. Adam Versényi from Carolina’s Department of Dramatic Art has led study abroad programs, lectured and presented several times at QUB, and he has a long-standing relationship with QUB’s Kurt Taroff. Versényi and Taroff (along with Patrick Lonergan at the University of Galway) have together developed various COIL courses, such as “Theatre and Pandemic” and “Theatre and Democracy.”
In addition to teaching, Taroff serves as the head of QUB’s School of Arts, English and Languages. He has long championed the partnership, regularly visiting Carolina to maintain connections and develop new ones. Last fall, Taroff met with faculty in UNC’s Department of English and Comparative Literature to announce the opening of a new building for the internationally recognized Seamus Heaney Centre, focused on excellence and innovation in creative writing and literary criticism. Access to the center’s programming, resources, teaching and research is a great example of the benefit that Carolina faculty and students gain through partnership with Queen’s.
International visits
In June 2024, with partial funding from a Global Partnership Award from UNC Global Affairs, three creative writing faculty from Carolina traveled to Belfast. Ross White recently shared about his experience with Michael Gutierrez and Julia Ridley Smith.
“The Seamus Heaney Center… had me practically salivating about the chance to bring our undergraduates to Belfast,” White said. “[While there] we were able to attend the Belfast Literary Festival, which runs annually around the time we’d be bringing students over. I was entranced by the quality of the festival and magnitude of the writers it lures to Belfast, with a particular focus on writers from Belfast inviting another writer who has had a tremendous influence on them. These conversations and readings would represent an enormous opportunity for our students.”
Available funding opportunities
At UNC Global Affairs, we are thrilled to support faculty through the Global Partnership Awards, and opportunities like this one showcase the possibilities that exist as a result of international travel between global partners.
We also identify and communicate to the campus about external funding opportunities to support work with international partners. In October 2023, we hosted a lunch-and-learn roundtable session with UNC Research to discuss the research funding landscape in the UK and the EU, specifically highlighting the U.S.–Ireland partner funding program. Faculty in Carolina’s Marsico Lung Institute have used this funding scheme to collaborate with QUB faculty on a multi-year research project on cystic fibrosis. The project has resulted in a novel pharmaceutical discovery, 20 peer-reviewed papers and editorials, and multiple national and international presentations.
Opportunities beyond travel
In-person visits are a great way to spur collaboration and lead to engagement, but travel isn’t always feasible, possible or affordable. In April 2024, the UNC and Queen’s nursing schools organized a “research blitz” — a one-hour virtual information session. Each institution showcased two faculty research presentations on topics like digital technology in cancer treatment to demonstrate possibilities for future collaboration. Participants also learned about complementary research strengths between QUB and Carolina.
“Both schools seek to foster interprofessional collaboration with a goal to improve health through strong international and community partnerships,” said Ashley Leak Bryant, senior associate dean for global initiatives at Carolina’s School of Nursing. “This research blitz — and ongoing conversations between faculty at our two schools — is crucial to inspiring our faculty and providing clear pathways to greater collaboration and innovation.”
Carolina and Queen’s in the future
Over the past few years, engagement between Carolina and Queen’s has expanded from a few interactions to thoughtful exploration in a few academic areas: the creative arts, peace studies, the health sciences and environmental sciences. Other possibilities will emerge, of course, as that’s the nature of healthy, fruitful collaboration.
Interest is growing, and I am excited to support our faculty in this partnership. At UNC Global Affairs, we are committed to connecting, advancing, spotting and evaluating opportunities for funding, researching and teaching between these two universities. For faculty who wish to learn more about this close partner, or global partnerships more broadly, are welcome to reach out to the Global Partnerships team for more information.