KU Leuven Expands Collaborative Bonds with Australian Partners During Belgian Economic Mission
From October 19 to 28, a delegation from KU Leuven will travel with the Belgian Economic Mission led by Princess Astrid. During the visit, Rector Luc Sels, Vice Rectors Peter Lievens and Piet Desmet will develop new initiatives with Australian partner universities. With that goal in mind, KU Leuven will organize seminars during the mission on educational technology and learning analytics, the use of data, AI and encryption in healthcare, and the importance of the nexus between university and business for research and innovation.
During his opening speech at the start of the new academic year, Rector Luc Sels underlined the importance of the international dimension of the university, also for his own region. Strategic partnerships play an important role in the further development of this dimension. A university that wants to remain among the international top must dare to invest in such sustainable partnerships amid rapidly changing international relations. Research and education are at a high level in Australia. KU Leuven is therefore very active in numerous research collaborations and exchange programs, currently with eleven Australian universities and research centers.
Luc Sels, rector of KU Leuven: “A trip Down Under demands something from a person. However, the great distance has never stood in the way of close collaboration with Australia’s top universities. Today, the University of Melbourne is perhaps our most important academic partner worldwide. But relationships are also close with the universities of Sydney, New South Wales and Queensland. An economic mission places these relationships in a special context. She involves government and business representatives from both countries in the academic collaboration. This offers opportunities to anchor a bilateral partnership in a triple helix framework.”
Strategic partnership
The mission focuses on the visit to the University of Melbourne (UoM). UoM is a priority partner of KU Leuven. These types of partnerships co-finance research collaboration, including through joint doctorates and seed funds. Since the start of the partnership in 2020, no fewer than 44 joint doctoral projects have been set up in a wide range of domains. This number will continue to grow rapidly, because both partners will maintain the investments. Several of these joint projects will be presented during the ‘Research and Innovation Forum on the Academia – Industry Nexus’ seminar that KU Leuven organizes together with UoM and in the presence of Princess Astrid during Economic Mission.
The partnership between UoM and KU Leuven also offers opportunities for student exchange between all faculties. The membership of UoM and KU Leuven in the global Universitas 21 network of research-oriented universities, which also includes the University of Queensland, the University of Sydney and the University of New South Wales (UNSW), facilitates this student mobility. But there is an imbalance: Australian students find it more difficult to find their way to KU Leuven than KU Leuven students to Australia. The limited range of English-language courses and subjects in the bachelor’s phase of the Flemish universities works to our disadvantage here. Reciprocity is necessary for a sustainable partnership. Therefore, a key objective of the visits to UoM, UNSW and the University of Sydney is to discuss the barriers and identify opportunities to overcome them.
The delegation also visits the Australian Catholic University (ACU). This visit results from the fruitful collaboration with the Leuven Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies. ACU is Australia’s leading provider of teacher training. Given the heated debate about the teacher shortage in Flanders, this visit will undoubtedly have great added value. The agenda includes the organization of teacher training courses, as inspiration for our new School of Education, and the attractiveness of the teaching profession.