Development of international research partnerships to strengthen universities for inclusive teaching and learning
The Indian government has committed itself to developing 100 smart cities by 2050 to address the rise in urban population. Similarly, in Kyrgyzstan smart city initiatives have been implemented with UNDP to ensure sustainability, efficiency, and livability of its growing urban population. Universities as centres of learning and social responsibility can and must contribute to finding sustainable solutions to urban development challenges and in fostering an equitable learning ecosystem which includes marginalized youth populations living and working in these smart cities. Universities should ideally provide the crucial institutional space to realize the concept of the ‘learning city’ which is being promoted globally by UNESCO in emerging economies. India and Kyrgyzstan – with large but mostly poor and unemployed youth populations – can benefit immensely from universities by integrating the training for employability of their youth populations with human, social, cultural, economic and environmental factors in the cities.
PRIA and Dr Rajesh Tandon, as UNESCO Co-Chair in Community Based Research, is a partner in “Building Research Collaboration with India and Kyrgyzstan”, a multi-partnership research collaboration supported by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF), UK and Scottish Funding Council. This interdisciplinary collaboration brings together leading academic researchers, policy makers and community organisations from India and Kyrgyzstan to build new partnerships with the University of Glasgow. It engages with the possibilities of knowledge exchange through partner meetings and site visits to smart cities in India and Kyrgyzstan, as well as a workshop in Glasgow, to explore the core problem of capacity building of universities in emerging economies, particularly in the context of inclusive and equitable smart cities.
As part of the collaboration, PRIA and Dr Rajesh Tandon will explore way to strengthen universities in developing skills for smart cities and liaison with key policymakers and stakeholders in India to support universities to become learning sites for smart urban settings. Dr Rajesh Tandon serves on the newly developed Unnat Bharat Abhijan (UBA 2.0) programme funded by the Department of Higher Education, Ministry of Human Resource Development, India. UBA 2.0 aims to create a vibrant relationship between higher educational institutions and the rural and marginalised populations, and has identified as a critical need to study the role of universities in professionalising skill building for smart cities.
This collaboration takes an interdisciplinary approach drawing upon the social sciences and engineering to explore how the existing knowledge bases in India and Kyrgyzstan can be strengthened in order to assess and improve the contribution of universities towards inclusive and sustainable skill development. This core outcome will derive from three major platforms: the development of international partnerships at various levels (city to city; and university to university both within cities and across countries); the capacity strengthening of academics in the field of skill development and learning in the context of smart cities; the development of new culturally contextualised understandings of the role of universities within their cities.
The objectives of the collaboration are:
• To build current state of knowledge on smart cities in India and Kyrgyzstan
• To explore the challenges for universities in providing equitable and inclusive learning/training
• To strengthen links between and build capacity of research partners to support learning in smart urban settings
