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Higher education student and staff mobility projec..
Higher education student and staff mobility project
Start date: Jun 1, 2014,
End date: Sep 30, 2015
PROJECT
FINISHED
The School of Advanced Study, University of London, is funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England to promote and facilitate research in the humanities, social science and law research communities nationally and internationally. It comprises 9 research institutes (Law, Classical Studies, History and History of Art, Human Rights, Development Studies, English Studies, Modern Languages and Philosophy). It has no undergraduates, and only a small population of master and doctoral students (250 or so in all). As set out in our Erasmus Policy Statement (and in support of our international strategy), it aims to fulfil its research promotion and facilitation remit across national boundaries by providing a research base for an international community of scholars; by creating the conditions for international research networks and collaborative opportunities to flourish; and extending the opportunities for that research to impact internationally.
One of the main pillars of our research support and facilitation role is the welcoming of visiting researchers from the EU and beyond. The School's location in the heart of Bloomsbury, with easy access to the academic resources that exist in central London, together with those of our own libraries and archives, combined with the collegial academic environment that exists here, make the School an attractive option for visiting researchers. We have therefore received since our inception 20 years ago very many hundreds of visiting research fellows, at all levels of seniority, and including many Erasmus doctoral students and academic researchers from EU HEIs, and this is firmly-established School activity. However, 2015 was the first year that the School of Advanced Study participated in Erasmus in terms of outward mobility. Whilst we were aware that for the first exploratory year the outward mobilities would be small in number, we had hoped for slightly more activity. An area of projected mobility from the masters' students and staff in the Institute of Commonwealth Studies did not take place; and no doctoral student in Law from the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies visited Athens. (It had been hoped that 1 member of staff and 2 masters students working in Human Rights would be able to spend time in Padua, Italy. That this did not transpire was partly due to a significant fall in student recruitment to the Masters programme, so that numbers overall were much lower than anticipated.)
The eventual participants were two senior academic staff of the School's Institute of Advanced Legal Studies (IALS, one of the 9 research institutes which make up the School), both of whom made two visits to the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Strong research and teaching links already exist between IALS and the Law School in the University of Athens: IALS had already welcomed several of the University of Athens' doctoral students, and the visits were intended to build on these. Both visits were extremely successful: our staff held a number of seminar/supervisions with doctoral students in Athens, as well as individual mentoring sessions.
The two outwardly-mobile staff members reported promptly as requested, and indicated their willingness to repeat the sessions in a future year; as well as encouraging colleagues in IALS and in other institutes to take similar steps. The visitors' impact on the students mentored in Athens was we understand entirely positive; the impact on the visiting and receiving staff will have been equally so, allowing longer-term research and other collaborations to be strengthened. The staff mobilities are recorded, and the funding recognised and the Institution credited as part of the resource allocation process; the staff mobilities are also discussed informally, including as part of the academic appraisal process. However, the School of Advanced Study will consider whether in future it might be appropriate for this to take a more formal shape -- that is, for recognition of 'international activity', including Erasmus mobility, to be formally recognised and acknowleged in the appraisal.