Newton-Mosharafa Fund

Researcher Links Workshops

We provide funding to bring together a UK/Egypt bilateral cohort of early career researchers to take part in workshops focussing on building links for future collaboration and enhancing the researchers’ career opportunities. The programme is supported by UK and Egyptian governments.

The aim of Researcher Links Workshops is to enhance and strengthen links for future collaboration, build research capacity in developing economies and enhance the researchers’ career opportunities.

Each workshop will be coordinated by two Leading Researchers, one from each country, and will focus either on a specific research area or on an interdisciplinary theme (for example ‘Sustainable Cities’). Workshop coordinators can identify up to four additional Leading or Established Researchers (two from each country) to be involved in the workshop and act as mentors, but the remaining participants must be researchers at an earlier stage in their career.

Proposals in any discipline/multidisciplinary area will be accepted (including from the natural sciences, social sciences, arts and humanities). However, they must be relevant to the themes of Newton-Mosharafa: energy, water, agriculture, healthcare and cultural heritage.

All Researcher Links-funded workshops will have the following three overarching objectives:

·         Support international development-relevant research – Workshops are intended to support research areas relevant to the economic development and welfare of Egypt.

·         Contribute to capacity building of early career researchers – The proposal should include a description of how the workshop will contribute to the personal and professional development of the participants. Workshop coordinators should indicate how they envisage this occurring, including any plans for long-term mentoring of early career researchers (either within each country, or cross-nationally).

·         Establish new research links or significantly develop existing links, with the potential for longer term sustainability – The aim of the workshop is to stimulate longer term links between the UK and Egypt, as well as to contribute to the personal and professional development of the participants. The workshop proposal should include an explanation of the mutual benefits to both the UK and Egyptian researchers and institutions. Coordinators should outline the specific outputs anticipated from the workshop. They should also explore any potential longer term benefit that might arise, thinking about who might benefit and how they might benefit and describing the actions that will be taken to ensure that potential impact is realised.