THE BRICS & Emerging Economies Universities Summit to take place in Johannesburg

Register for the THE BRICS & Emerging Economies Universities Summit

Times Higher Education’s third BRICS & Emerging Economies Universities Summit will be held in partnership with the University of Johannesburg between 30 November and 2 December.

The event, which will bring together higher education sector leaders, policymakers, academics and industry figures, will be on the theme “Reimagining the world-class university”.

The summit will explore strategies for driving up quality in teaching, research and knowledge transfer; leadership challenges facing institutions in developing economies; and how industry partnerships can prepare students for employment.

It will also include the official launch of the 2017 THE BRICS & Emerging Economies Rankings, which will be released at 9pm GMT on 30 November. There will be a masterclass on the results with THE rankings editor Phil Baty.

The conference was founded in 2014 with the Russian Academic Excellence Project (Project 5-100), which aims to see five Russian universities enter the top 100 globally ranked higher education institutions by 2020.

John Aubrey Douglass, senior research fellow in public policy and higher education at the University of California, Berkeley, will deliver a keynote speech on developing a flagship university, while there will be an interview with Simon Schwartzman, senior researcher at the Institute for Studies on Labour and Society.

The summit will also hear from several university presidents including Mikhail Strikhanov, rector of the National Research Nuclear University; Marta Losada, president of Antonio Nariño University; Raj Kumar, founding vice-chancellor of O. P. Jindal Global University; Adam Habib, vice-chancellor of the University of the Witwatersrand; and Deirdre Carabine, co-founder of the Virtual University in Uganda.

Bairbre Redmond, provost of Universitas 21, a network of worldwide research-intensive universities, and Godwin Murunga, senior research fellow at the Institute for Development Studies at the University of Nairobi and former director of the African Leadership Centre in Nairobi, will both speak as part of a panel on the place of global networks in reimagining the future university.

Meanwhile, Frederic Michael Litto, president of the Brazilian Association of Distance Education, will chair a panel discussion on the role of online learning at universities in developing and emerging countries.

ellie.bothwell@tesglobal.com

Register for the THE BRICS & Emerging Economies Universities Summit