The University of Glasgow has become the latest UK higher education institution to set up a major European collaboration in the wake of the Brexit vote.
The Scottish university said on 19 June that it had signed a partnership agreement with Leuphana University of Lüneburg to jointly establish a European Centre for Advanced Studies in Lower Saxony.
The venture is seen as providing a platform for research collaborations, joint courses, and student and staff exchanges, as well as, significantly, creating a vehicle for joint research funding bids. This means that it could offer Glasgow a means of partly mitigating any reduction in access to European Union research funding after the UK leaves the bloc.
Sir Anton Muscatelli, Glasgow’s principal, said that “with Brexit on the horizon, it is essential that we continue to be heavily involved in successful collaborations”.
Sascha Spoun, Leuphana’s president, said that the new centre “brings the opportunity to send out a strong political signal for the idea of Europe and the future development of academia in times of Brexit”.
The announcement comes after the University of Warwick formed a partnership with the University of Paris Seine and Vrije Universiteit Brussel, aimed in part at accessing European funding for cross-border higher education networks.
Imperial College London has opened a joint mathematics laboratory with the French National Centre for Scientific Research, the University of Oxford has signed an alliance with four universities in Berlin, and King’s College London is considering opening a branch campus in Dresden.
