Global engagement

Despite uncertainty and instability around the world, GCU continues to thrive as a truly global, outward-facing university with its network of campuses and collaborations for research, innovation and teaching, all predicated by its Common Good mission.

Despite the UK leaving the European Union, the University has continued to work collaboratively with European partners and has won several large Horizon grants tackling the world’s major challenges including gender violence, sedentary behaviour, the spread of extremism, and diabetic foot disease. Meanwhile, the University continues to play a leading role in ground-breaking projects across the world to find solutions to its most pressing problems.

In Europe, D.Rad is identifying the actors, networks and wider social contexts driving radicalisation.

In response to COVID, the SEVERE project brings together GCU students and their EU peers to generate international social enterprises through Virtual Environments and Remote Entrepreneurship.

Through the Sustainable Fashion Employability Skills (SFES) project, students are working with luxury brands and retail groups to tackle the growing environmental concerns surrounding the fashion industry.

Further afield, the SYSE project is Supporting Youth Social Entrepreneurs in South Africa and Ghana.

Through the EU-funded ENPRENDIA project, we have been helping Indian universities embed equality and diversity programmes and support female entrepreneurship.

On the global stage, the University is also successfully pursuing its aspiration to be world-leading in social innovation. We have been working in Sri Lanka and Vietnam with the British Council to help institutions establish social enterprise incubators, student leadership programmes and specialised units to support social innovation. Following endorsement from the Scottish Government, we also play a leading role in the European Social Innovation Alliance, as a specialised centre, and manage a networking platform, Glocal Social Innovation through Knowledge Exchange, with more than 500 members in 44 different countries.

Our research centres are also underpinning their commitment to the UN SDGs through ambitious international projects as well as serving their local communities. The Research Centre for Health has been leading on Health Cascade, introducing a co-creation approach to public health. The Mary Robinson Centre for Climate Justice contributed to UNFCCC Africa Climate Week 2022 in Gabon as part of the lead-up to the UN Climate Change Conference COP27 in Egypt. Through the Horizon project OPERANDUM, the Built Environment Asset Management Centre is helping to develop and to deploy innovative nature-based solutions to environmental challenges.