Exploration of international trust and collaboration in higher education and science

The British Council asked Research Consulting to produce a report which explores the relationships between international trust and collaboration in higher education and science.

Scientific advances and innovation are now more important than ever to address global, national and regional challenges and no one country can tackle these challenges alone. This has been made ever more abundantly clear recently in our understanding of and global response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

While science and technology are increasingly characterised by systemic competition between and within countries, academic research remains collaborative in nature. Research collaboration brings together different forms of expertise, enables access to a wider range of data and brings research findings to a broader audience.

We adopted a five-stage process to produce the report, beginning with a brief scoping review and case study analysis, followed by a more in-depth data analysis and a series of interviews with 27 policymakers and research funders. We then integrated and analysed all our findings before establishing a set of key recommendations.