Research Councils UK in China

In the latter half of 2007 the Research Council in the UK established an office in Beijing.
The Director, Chris Godwin, describes the functions of the office as:

1) to facilitate research links between the Chinese research organizations and the Research Councils in the UK, with future joint collaboration as the objective

2) to respond to the requests for advice from the Research Councils in the UK, and research calls from them with relevance to China

3) to feed-back to the Research Councils on strategic research prospects in China

4) additionally to use the RCUK China’s own operational budget to launch specific research calls in China with its own funding.

The RCUK in China claims that initially the most active Research Councils, as far as developing China-specific research projects are concerned, are the Engineering and Physical Science Research Council (EPSRC), and to a lesser extent the Arts and Humanities Research Council. The ESPRC are engaged on a GBP 6 million renewable energy project, and also on a smaller project on spintronics.

However, RCUK China wanted to stress that they represent all 7 research councils in the UK, including the ESRC, which is obviously of most interest to LSE.

Indeed, RCUK China have been delighted to see so much activity by LSE in China; they clearly feel that in terms of looking to develop long-term and sustainable research links, with actual “working projects”, LSE was ahead of most others in the UK. They have mentioned that other UK universities that have come to visit them may have projects on paper, but fewer working projects at this point.

For further information, please contact b.p.smith1@lse.ac.uk. Brendan works for the School in Beijing and has excellent contacts.

^ Back to top