Overview

Under the Going Global Partnerships Programme, the British Council in Malaysia in collaboration with the Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) has launched the inaugural UK-Malaysia University Consortium in 2022, which is designed to be a flagship initiative that promotes strategic engagement and bilateral cooperation in higher education between its partner universities in the UK and in Malaysia.

Through cooperation between the British Council and the Ministry of Higher Education Malaysia, the Consortium comprising 16 UK universities and 20 Malaysia public universities will lay a foundation for creating long term collaborations, shared priorities, and complementary expertise between UK and Malaysia in HE. This is aligned with the Malaysian Higher Education Blueprint 2015-2025 and the UK International Education Strategy

Paving the path to achieving the Consortium’s aim, the British Council is delighted to publish a restricted grant call for lead institutions from the UK-Malaysia University Consortium to submit joint proposals in response to the UK-Malaysia Partnerships Catalyst Grant 2022.  A total grant value of GBP220,000 has been allocated to support four higher education collaborative projects (GBP55,000 each) between the UK and Malaysia Consortium member institutions that address emerging higher education challenges which are shared by UK and Malaysia. 

Objective

The overarching aim of the Grant is to facilitate partnerships among Consortium university members in UK and Malaysia in any of the four thematic areas below. The four thematic areas are decided based on the consolidated feedback from the consortium members on their priority areas for internationalisation and collaboration. Cross-thematic and interdisciplinary proposals are strongly encouraged. Please refer to Appendix 1 (of the Call Guidelines for Applicants) for the context of each thematic area. 

1.    Student Employability and Future Work Skills

2.    Innovative Pedagogy including curriculum and digitalisation.

3.    Entrepreneurship

4.    Women Leadership and Empowerment 

The Grant can cover partnership activities with the objectives below.

  •  Strengthen capacity and quality in teaching, learning, research and innovation
  • Share knowledge and exchange best practices
  • Establish new institutional partnerships or enhance existing institutional partnerships in: - 

               a. student and staff mobility

               b. internships and attachments

               c. research and innovation

              d. transnational education

Activities covered by the grant can be delivered in digital, face-to-face or blended formats. However, we strongly encourage the applicants consider the carbon footprint when planning and designing the activities for the proposals. 

Results 

We thank the consortium members for actively participating in the Catalyst Grant 2022 and invested their time and efforts to submit a proposal. 

A total of 27 applications have been received in which 22 applications are eligible for assessments. The assessment and selections took place in July and August 2022, and four proposals have been selected and awarded.  

Please find below the successful projects for Catalyst Grant 2022. 

Project Title

UK Lead Institution 

Malaysia Lead Institution 

Network4training&research - A collaborative capacity building network for training and research for rails and seaports Infrastructure industry development aligned with SDGs

Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU) 

Universiti Malaysia Perlis (UniMAP) 

KECEKAPAN: Key Entrepreneurial Cognitive Education & Knowledge Advancement Project: A Network 

University of Glasgow (UofG) 

Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) 

PIE II Programme for Women in STEAM-H (Partnership in Employability for Women II in Science, Technology, Aquaculture, Engineering, Mathematics and Healthcare) 

Cardiff Metropolitan University 

Universiti Teknologi MARA (UTM)

Embedding Entrepreneurship & Accelerating Innovation through Partnership 

King’s College London 

Universiti Malaya (UM)

Empowering Women Academic Researchers with Innovation Process Strategies

University of Suffolk

Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM)

i-Digitics: An International Partnership for Graduate Digital Future Work Skills in Data Analytics

Liverpool John Moores University

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM)