British Council has a key role in promoting a healthy culture of research in Pakistan. It has been in recent years putting out grants for researchers in Pakistan and linking them with UK researchers to provide broader avenues.
The British Council has launched research workshops in Oct 2020 called Researcher Links in climate change that are designed to provide financial support to host virtual research workshops for participants from the UK and partner countries (this includes Pakistan, Vietnam, Indonesia, South Africa, Egypt, Brazil). These workshops will work towards innovative solutions to development challenges caused by climate change. The workshop themes should align with one or more of the COP26 priorities (Adaptation and Resilience, Nature, Energy Transition, Clean Road Transport, Finance). Workshops will take place before the end of August 2021 to allow for relevant outcomes to be featured in the lead up to COP26.
These workshops will contribute towards British Council’s long-standing work in the Higher Education sector in Pakistan. The British Council Pakistan has an enduring partnership with the Higher Education Commissions (HEC) for the progress of Higher Education in country since last 15 years. Currently, both are jointly implementing a 5 year project together called Pak-UK Gateway launched in 2018. The project has the following seven components: innovative and collaborative research, higher education leadership, quality assurance and standard setting, distance learning, international mobility, community engagement and transnational education.
Under the last year’s Innovation collaborative research grants call a total of 263 applications were received- out of which 6 researchers have been selected for a period of 3 years. The individual grant value of up to PKR 50 million. This call supported research partnerships between Pakistani and UK universities, research bodies and existing centres of excellence that focus on any of the emerging disciplines/priority areas (Medical and allied health sciences, Energy, Climate Change, Artificial Intelligence, Robotics, Big Data , etc.