The Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU) is seeking a higher education professional(s) to develop a toolkit that provides both theoretical grounding and actionable frameworks and tools to support our members in the development, delivery, and sustainability of equitable partnerships in international higher education.
The ACU is an international membership organisation dedicated to working with its 500+ member universities across 50 countries to build a better would through higher education. We believe it is essential to support universities’ societal and research roles in tackling global issues in order to build a more equal society for all. Supporting equitable partnerships between our global network of members is at the heart of this mission and is fundamental to our organisational strategy, The Road to 2030.
Throughout 2021 the ACU has been supporting the Research Fairness Initiative's (RFI) 'Year of Equitable Research Partnerships', during which we are calling for the prioritisation of equitable partnership principles amongst all stakeholders in the research-to-action pathway. A toolkit, utilised by ACU members to inform their ways of working as well as embedded within relevant ACU programmes, will support the application of these principles.
The post-holder will design and deliver the development of this toolkit, engaging with best practice and key literature, whilst also working in partnership with the ACU’s Membership, Programmes, and Research & Insight units, and the Supporting Research Community (SRC) Steering Committee to engage and solicit input from the ACU’s diverse membership.
The toolkit will be finalised by 31 August 2022.
This toolkit will be available to all ACU members and should be able to be utilised in a variety of ways, for example:
The toolkit should represent international perspectives and include theoretical grounding, as well as examples of actionable frameworks and tools to support ACU members in the development, delivery, and sustainability of partnerships that are equitable. The toolkit should be accessible and translatable to different contexts across the Commonwealth.
The development of the toolkit will be conducted between March-August 2022 and build on the work of the ACU and our partners.
The primary recipient of the work will be the Association of Commonwealth Universities (ACU), who will make the toolkit available for use by ACU members and within relevant ACU programmes and other activities.
The purpose of the toolkit is to support staff and students at ACU members in the development, delivery, and sustainability of equitable partnerships in international higher education, thus contributing to addressing imbalances within global higher education. Target users could be anyone working to develop and manage international research partnerships, delivering community-based participatory research, and/or working with indigenous communities.
Objectives of this project are:
Applicants should propose a methodology and a tentative work schedule that delivers the objectives within scope of work.
The ACU welcomes applications that include participatory approaches during both project inception and implementation.
The ACU also welcomes collaborative proposals involving multiple institutions.
The post-holder will be required to deliver the following:
Please submit the following documents to ept@acu.ac.uk by 21 February 2022 at 23:59 UTC:
This assignment will require a higher education professional, or small team of higher education professionals, who will work in close collaboration with the ACU.
The criteria for the evaluation of applications are: