Why we built this directory
As a UK hub, we receive requests from other humanitarian actors to help identify relevant experts and collaborators and often seek academic expertise to support our work. We had a need to understand the existing capabilities within the UK so that we can best make them available to others as appropriate.
Additionally, we wanted a consistent and systematic way to track academic capabilities and expertise in the UK to facilitate the formation of productive and strategic relationships. To address this, we worked with Science Practice to create this directory to map the humanitarian academic landscape and provide a quick way to navigate the capabilities and knowledge within UK academia.
We built this resource for our own use and are sharing it publicly as we understand that navigating this landscape can be challenging, especially for those unfamiliar with UK academia. By focusing on academic research centres, the directory offers a high-level overview of UK capabilities and serves as a starting point to quickly make sense of the field and available specialisations. We hope that this directory serves as a valuable resource, highlighting the range and diversity of existing expertise that can be called upon to address pressing and evolving humanitarian needs.
Our aims
- Improve the visibility of existing knowledge and expertise within UK academic research centres in relation to humanitarian response.
- Facilitate collaborations between humanitarian actors tackling global humanitarian challenges and relevant UK academics.
- Extend networks and support the discovery of new academic collaborators and partners.
- Understand where current strengths, gaps, and contributions to the sector lie.
What is an academic research centre?
Academic research centres are based within universities or higher education establishments and focus on research in a particular field or interdisciplinary area. These centres bring together academics, researchers, experts, and resources across departments to advance knowledge, innovate, and address complex challenges.
They often collaborate with a range of stakeholders including international organisations, NGOs, governments, community groups, industry, and other academic institutions. Their contributions can range from conducting research and evaluations; advising and sharing expertise; inspiring, developing and applying new approaches, methods, and technologies; influencing policy; shaping public discourse; and driving societal progress.
As we are interested in all academic contributions to the humanitarian sector, we have also included academic research institutions, and academic research groups in the directory.
The difference between a research centre, institution, and group lies in how they are organised:
- Research centres are part of a single department for administrative and financial purposes but collaborate across different departments.
- Research institutions operate independently from specific departments.
- Research groups are typically more informal gatherings of academic researchers.
We chose to focus on academic research centres rather than individual academics as they are less subject to change and provide a more maintainable profile for a directory.
Directory scope
There is a strategic need within the UK to understand what expertise is available and where it lies so that they can be called upon in times of crises where most effective and appropriate. However, we also recognise the importance of global and local expertise. If there’s interest to further expand this or compliment it with other efforts get in touch.