The Africa & Middle East Regional Network is excited to be hosting its first “Knowledge Africa” event, to celebrate UCL’s work in the area.

Taking place on Thursday 16 June, the event will cover topics ranging from UCL’s frontline stance in the fight against HIV to connecting East African households to electricity supplies.

There will be the opportunity to find out more about different initiatives and opportunities through a series of presentations and a photo exhibition. Students are also encouraged to take part by submitting a poster illustrating their work for display on the day.

Find out more about speakers due to take part here.

Knowledge Africa was established following feedback from members of the Africa & Middle East Regional Network, which meets once a term, who wanted to find a new way to engage colleagues from across the university in the latest initiatives.

Ijeoma Uchegbu, Pro-Vice-Provost for Africa & the Middle East, said: “UCL has a great range of collaborations underway with partners across the continent and we’re really looking forward to bringing together academics and students to showcase these and celebrate their work.”

Knowledge Africa will take place from 9.00 – 13.00 in Roberts 110. Register to attend on Eventbrite here.

• Register to attend the next Africa & Middle East Regional Network meeting, on 21 June, here, using the password GEO.
• Find out more about UCL’s African Studies Research Centre
• Image credit: African Voices event 2016, UCL Grand Challenges / Jacqueline Lau

Dame Nicola Brewer, UCL’s Vice-Provost (International), joined a panel of higher education leaders from around the world at the British Council’s Going Global conference in Cape Town this week.

Speaking at the session ‘University partnerships: delivering international impact?’, Dame Nicola – who was formerly British High Commissioner to South Africa – presented UCL’s Global Engagement Strategy and our collaborative approach to partnership working with the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits).

She outlined how both institutions have been taking forward a number of initiatives as part of their emerging partnership. These range from classic forms of international activity (visits and lectures by faculty in each university, exploring funding opportunities to support student mobility) to more ambitious plans for joint appointments, as well as an idea for a co-designed and co-hosted conference about ‘equal partnerships in an unequal world’.

Dr Peter Clayton, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of Rhodes University, chaired the session, and fellow speakers represented Brazil’s University of Campinas, The University of Tokyo and Heriot-Watt University.

Wits University Vice-Chancellor Professor Adam Habib and Deputy Vice-Chancellor Professor Zeblon Vilakazi (pictured above with Dame Nicola) also attended the session.

“As London’s Global University, UCL is looking to build reciprocal relationships of mutual trust and respect with partners around the world to co-create fair solutions to some of the most pressing global challenges,” said Dame Nicola.

“Our Global Engagement Strategy provides the framework and the focus for this approach. UCL’s partnership with the University of the Witwatersrand is a great example of how diverse and geographically distant universities can work together and learn from each other to deliver greater impact together than they could apart.”

Professor Vilakazi said the partnership is a perfect fit for Wits, adding: “Wits is located at the heart of a large metropolis that is grappling with a set of dynamics that are often characterised as a collision between the challenges of the ‘developed global north’ and the ‘developing global south’. This makes Wits and UCL ideal partners, as Global City Universities, to share expertise and make a unique contribution in addressing some of these challenges.”

Going Global is an annual conference offering an open forum for global leaders of tertiary education to discuss issues facing the international education community. This year’s theme was “Building nations and connecting cultures: education policy, economic development and engagement.”

• Read Media FHE’s Q&A with Dame Nicola
• See the highlights from Going Global 2016
• Join UCL’s Africa and Middle East Network

Three UCL students were selected from amongst hundreds of applicants to travel to San Francisco and attend the ninth Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI-U) conference at the University of California, Berkeley.

UCL is one of just two UK university members of CGI-U and students representing the faculties of Arts & Humanities, Engineering and the Institute of Education joined more than 1,200 others from over 70 universities and 45 countries to take part.

All had made a ‘commitment to action’ – a project to improve an aspect of a community based locally or overseas, in the fields of education, environment, poverty, peace, human rights or health.

Founded by former US President Bill Clinton – pictured below with the Global Engagement Office’s Programme Manager Rachel Corcoran – CGI-U builds on the successful model of the Clinton Global Initiative, which brings together world leaders to take action on global challenges.

UCL students can apply for funding to develop their projects via CGI-U’s Innovation Fund, even if they did not attend the conference.

“Don’t waste inspiration”

Naomi Poyser, final year undergraduate in Greek & Latin and Student Enterprise Ambassador at UCL Advances, built Greenseed, an app to encourage users to share tips and advice on growing their own food.

Her favourite part of the conference was a panel discussion chaired by Clinton, with the founders of Pinterest, Khan Academy, MuslimGirl.net and Cady Coleman, a NASA astronaut.

“This discussion blew me away; the panel members were all so charismatic and had great insight to share from their amazing and varied experiences, and Bill Clinton kept the discussion exciting and impactful,” she said.

“From the founder of Pinterest I learnt to view failure as a stepping stone, from the founder of MuslimGirl the importance of writing your own narrative, and from the astronaut how to put things in perspective. My favourite lesson was from Salman Khan, who told us ‘don’t waste inspiration’ – advice I have been sticking to since being back.”

Preparation for global careers

Francisco Cordoba Ortalora, studying an MA in Lifelong Learning Policy & Management, created Diaspora Colombia, a mentoring programme and e-learning platform that empowers young Colombian leaders from disadvantaged backgrounds to engage in world-class education.

Francisco said during the conference he learned strategies to expand his programme’s reach through partnerships, as well as the importance of not losing sight of his true goal. He particularly liked meeting NASA astronaut Cady Coleman, adding: “She shared with us all her struggles to achieve success and how to keep motivated along the way.”

The delegates also picked up practical advice. After developing Scoodle, a system enabling students to search and instantly book lessons with tutors in any subject, first-year Computer Science student Mujavid Bukhari said attending CGI-U helped him learn about increasing organisational capacity and fundraising from leaders in the field.

While in San Francisco, Mujavid attended Stanford’s Asia-Pacific Entrepreneurship Summit and said: “I’m now just waiting for exams to finish so that I can really get started developing Scoodle.”

The students spoke of the value in networking with like-minded peers. Naomi added: “Meeting students from all around the world who are all working towards addressing world problems was incredible and gave me so much hope and motivation. I met people who I will definitely be staying in touch with, and who I could potentially collaborate with in the future.

“Bill Clinton’s closing comment that “we can’t make a perfect world, but we can make a better one” really touched me and has inspired me more than ever to carry out my commitment.”

• Additional funding options for socially-minded UCL students include: Global Citizenship Project Grants, UCL community contribution,  Social Enterprise grants and travel grants
• Read more about CGI-U

Professor Hiroshi Kagami from Shinsu University, who is also Programme Officer of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), will visit UCL on Monday 9 November, 4pm, to present, “Funding system and current situation on Life Science Research in Japan.”

The event is an informal seminar which will be of relevance to those interested in funding systems and/or establishing collaborations with Japan.

Date: Monday 9 November
Time: 4 pm
Venue: Medical Sciences 131 AV Hill Lecture Theatre

UCL is delighted to welcome Rodrigo Valdés Pulido, Minister for Finance, Government of Chile to give a public lecture on ‘Chilean Economy: challenges ahead.’

• Date: 7 September 2015

• Time: 15.15-16.10

• Location: UCL, Gower Street, WC1E 6BT (Exact building will be confirmed 2 weeks before the event)

• Open to academics, staff, students and the general public

You MUST register to attend

The Minister’s visit to UCL takes place in the context of Chile Day 2015, which is organised by Chilean Ministry of Finance and INBEST Chile. It seeks to promote Chile abroad as a highly attractive country for investment and as a financial fund management platform for Latin America and emerging markets as well as strengthening ties between Chilean local capital markets and its global partners.

Social justice remains an enduring, if at times muted, driver of social policy. At the city scale, this normative imperative is increasingly being encapsulated through the notion of spatial justice – an attempt to conceptualise, and render actionable, the complex interplay of relations between distribution, recognition, governance and territory. Spatial justice is a bold and vivid concept, inherently dynamic and political and, as such, warrants closer scrutiny.

With the support of the UCL-Institut Français du Royaume Uni Partnership, colleagues from the Bartlett’s Development Planning Unit and Department of Geography at UCL will, on 7-8 September, have an opportunity to unpack the concept in dialogue with partners from Université de Paris Est (UPE).

The exchange will enable a rare exploration of the linguistic and conceptual appropriation of the term in Anglophone and Francophone literatures, as well as their translation into urban policy. Working across disciplinary and theoretical vantage points, grounded in Northern and Southern based cases of practice, the exchange will test the similarities and differences between so-called ‘French’ and ‘Anglo’ perspectives on spatial justice, and explore how these affect both the conceptualisation of appropriate policy responses, and the formulation of policy instruments to drive implementation.

The exchange will include a public event on 7 September with political philosophers Jonathan Wolff (UCL) and Catherine Audard (LSE & Forum for European Philosophy), who will explore the possible implications for urban development of justice debates in Anglo-American and Francophone philosophical and political thought.

For more information, please email Dr. Barbara Lipietz at b.lipietz@ucl.ac.uk

School pupils around the world will be starting their first enterprises on Saturday 4 July as part of Citrus Saturday, a UCL initiative to get young people thinking about entrepreneurship. The programme gives teams of young people aged 11 to 15 years a taste of running their own businesses through setting up and managing lemonade stands for the day.

Over 200 young people are due to take part in this year’s event, with participating countries including the UK, Ireland, France, Belgium, Germany, Spain, Poland, Armenia, Swaziland, Mozambique, Burkina Faso, Niger, Kenya and Tanzania.

Media are invited to attend the formal launch at the British Library where Timothy Barnes and Jack Wratten will be available for interview from 11:30am, while local and international media can also attend local stands – for a full list of where Citrus Saturday is happening please visit the website

Citrus Saturday, which is in its fifth year in the UK and second internationally, is a hands-on education programme developed by UCL to provide an introduction to entrepreneurship for young people.

Each team will run their stand as closely to that of a small business as possible, having been provided with seed funding from UCL to buy fruit and materials for the day. Any profits made are kept by the teams to reinforce the link between hard work and earning money.

Jack Wratten, Citrus Saturday Manager, said: “Our mission is to ensure that every young person in the world who wants to learn about business and experience entrepreneurship first-hand gets the opportunity to do just that.

“Citrus Saturday helps to fulfil the need for enterprise education in a fun and easy way, students directly learn skills not only valuable for entrepreneurs but for the entire workforce of tomorrow.”

Participation in the programme, which was established in 2011 by Timothy Barnes, Director of UCL Enterprise Operations, has tripled since last year and aims to engage with 1 million young people by 2020.

The programme is designed for small teams of pupils, with the Citrus Saturday Toolkit available to any organisation that works with young people. The Toolkit includes all materials needed to run workshops covering the basics of being an entrepreneur.

The teams will be supervised by volunteers from UCL and the wider community, who will provide support on the day and at introductory workshops, teaching the teams everything from business planning to food hygiene.

The stands have been generously supported by partners including The British Library, Spitalfields Market and Network Rail, with supplies provided by Booker.

On 24 February, nearly 160 UCL students from China and Hong Kong gathered in the North Cloisters to celebrate Chinese New Year.

For over a decade, successive UCL Pro-Vice-Provosts have marked the Chinese New Year with an informal drinks reception for staff and students from China, and for staff working with Chinese partners.

The issue of whether it was in fact the Year of the Goat, Sheep or Ram, a debate hotly contested in the media this year, was raised by Pro-Vice-Provost for China, Professor Xiao Guo, who suggested that if the year was anything like UCL students, who are independent and auspicious, 2015 must be the Year of the Goat.

“People born in a Year of the Goat are generally believed to be gentle mild-mannered, shy, stable, sympathetic, amicable, and brimming with a strong sense of kindheartedness and justice.

They have very delicate thoughts, strong creativity, and perseverance, and acquire professional skills well. Although they look gentle on the surface, they are tough on the inside, always insisting on their own opinions in their minds. They have strong inner resilience and excellent defensive instincts.”

China Highlights

Speakers and guests at the event included:

• Professor Michael Arthur, UCL President and Provost
• Dame Nicola Brewer, Vice Provost (International)
• Sir John Boyd, Chairman of Asia House
• Lord Tim Clement Jones, UCL Council and House of Lords All Party China Group
• Professor emeritus, Michael Worton

Visit the UCL Global China webpage for the latest information on partnerships and collaborations in the region, current activities and details on how to join the UCL staff China Regional Network

UCL will host of the XIII Symposium of Mexican Students and Studies 2015: “Connecting Ideas, Building the Future”. This event will take place during the summer, from 23-25 July.

Organised by the UCLU Mexican Society, there will be a number of parallel sessions for students as well as lectures by recognised researchers in topics related to science, technology, public health, environment, human rights, politics, and arts and humanities in Mexico.

The Governments of the UK and Mexico decided to celebrate 2015 as the dual Year of Mexico in the UK/Year of the UK in Mexico. Followed by the visit of the Prince of Wales to Mexico, this event will be the academic peak of the Dual Year in an open, plural, and critic environment to discuss the main concerns of the Mexican population.

All students from any nationality whose research is about Mexican studies are warmly invited to apply in this unique opportunity to network with their peers. The call for papers will be published in due course.

To find out more, please contact the lead organiser, Tonatiuh Anzures at tonatiuh.anzures.11@ucl.ac.uk or follow the UCLU Mexican Society on Twitter @ucl_mexsoc or Facebook