MAPPING UK HIGHER EDUCATION ENGAGEMENT WITH colombia

1. MAPPING UK HIGHER EDUCATION ENGAGEMENT WITH colombia Case studies • @UUKIntl

2. University of Leicester • Social interactions during the year three undergraduate field course in Colombia • Field trips to the Colombian Amazon • 140 students over 12 years • Led by Dr Berrio and Dr Boom

3. Background • The School of Geography, Geology and Environment (SGGE) at the University of Leicester has a long-standing collaboration with Colombian academic institutions and funding agencies, with particular emphasis in understanding both palaeo- and contemporary- ecology and biodiversity. • Collaboration with Colombia began as a result of the appointment of Dr Berrio in 2005 and has encompassed both teaching and research.

4. Aims of the collaboration • To provide opportunities for UK students to study and understand ecological issues within neotropical rainforests, • to present opportunities for Colombian academics and students to visit the UK to develop their research, • to provide a collaborative research environment to address key ecological challenges.

5. About the field trip • The visit incorporates studying typical aquatic and terrestrial Amazonian ecosystems. • The module has facilitated interactions with universities in Bogotá, such as the Universidad de la Sabana, who offered a short Spanish course to undergraduate students. The trip has been consistently praised by the students as one of the highlights of their time at University.

6. Research and teaching • Research links exist with several Colombian universities: • National University of Colombia • University of the Andes • Universidad del Rosario • Eafit University • Javeriana University • Members of staff from SGGE at the University of Leicester have contributed to local academic programmes through research seminars at postgraduate level and teaching.

7. Two-way mobility • As a result of the consortium developed between the UK and Colombian universities, direct links with the Colombian bodies Colciencias, Colfuturo and Icetex have supported opportunities for mobilisation of Colombian academics to visit the University of Leicester, and Colombian graduate students with bursaries for postgraduate studies to study at SGGE at Leicester.

8. Further funding and further collaboration • More recently, QR GCRF funding was used to carry out a collaborative workshop to discuss key issues linking biodiversity and ecosystem services that are currently under threat due to the intensification of agriculture in high-Andean ecosystems. • This has led to partnerships with key Colombian academic and governmental institutions¹, with a commitment to collaborate on research into environmental change at different temporal and spatial scales in order to assess risks and threats to natural ecosystems. 1 Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies (IDEAM), the Alexander von Humboldt Institute (attaché to ministry of Environment), the Pontifica Universidad Javeriana, and the Medellin branch of the Colombian National University 

9. Harnessing innovation in city development for social equity and wellbeing • Medellin Urban Innovation #MUI • University of Edinburgh, Heriot-Watt University • Universidad Nacional de Colombia Sede Medellín, Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Universidad Santo Tomas • Learning from the experience of Medellín (Colombia) as a model for other cities in the Global South

10. Background • Medellín in Colombia pioneered innovative forms of planning and management and was acclaimed as the ‘most innovative city in the world’ by the Urban Land Institute in 2012. • Medellín remains, however, one of the most socially unequal cities in Latin America.

11. Introduction • The project undertaken by the international team of researchers, led by Dr Soledad Garcia Ferrari and Dr Harry Smith, was established with the Newton Fund Institutional Links Grant (2015) and continued in subsequent GCRF (2017, 2018) and ESRC-CONACYT (2019) research awards. The overarching research question concerned how to make Medellín a more socially equitable and environmentally sustainable city. • The research is evaluating Medellín’s planning experience from ‘the ground up’, developing strategies that involve communities and institutions on a level platform, and is providing insights relevant to other cities undergoing similar development.

12. Organisations involved and impact • This collaborative research involved a knowledge exchange partnership among universities in the UK and Colombia, working with other institutions such as the city’s development company (EDU), the planning department, and civic and community organisations. • The research has led to changes in the Municipal Development Plan, the local policy on informal rental housing, community understanding of landslide risk, and ways in which joint local government/community decision-making around landslide mitigation is achieved. The latter has also been extended to the city of São Paulo, Brazil.

13. the research • Over two years working with academic and non-academic organisations in Medellín, the project designed and implemented four work packages covering: heritage and cultural values; housing and habitat; public space and wellbeing; and mobility and socio-spatial integration. • The research was aimed at transforming the city planning agenda and informing future city planners.

14. findings • The institutional links work showed that despite the city’s implementation of the new planning instruments created by national legislation in the 1990s and Medellín’s innovative approach to urban management known as ‘social urbanism’, socio-economic and spatial inequality remain major problems. • The research partnership established through this project saw opportunities in developing research that would inform furthermore community-based and focused innovation that could be adapted in other urban areas in the Global South making use of Medellin’s renown as an innovative city.

15. Further funding • Research led to two subsequent GCRF-funded research projects, led by Dr Harry Smith, exploring the scope for landslide risk-reducing strategies for informal settlements. • These projects confirmed that landslide risk in informal communities is not only a technical issue but also a political one, which necessitates collaboration between communities and the state and the overcoming of administrative barriers and mutual fear.  

16. Universityofdurham, Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá • Fostering collaboration between world-leading and emerging academics in heteronymy • Learning from the experience of Medellín (Colombia) as a model for other cities in the Global South

17. Background • Heteronymy, or writing under different authorial guises, where those authorial voices have biographies, histories, and ideologies of their own, is a practice strongly linked with the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds. • Antonio Machado and Fernando Pessoa were both key poets engaging in heteronymy in the early twentieth century.

18. Introduction • The initiative between the University of Durham and the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá brings together a number of established and emerging scholars who work on a wide range of authors from across the Hispanic and Lusophone worlds who write ‘heteronymically’.

19. The universities and academics • Nicholas Roberts in Durham is the world-leading critic of the Venezuelan heteronymist Eugenio Montejo. • Universidad de los Andes is the hub for academics such as Mario Barrero Fajardo, who works on the Colombian poet Álvaro Mutis, and Francisco Pizarro, who writes on Pessoa (Francisco Pizarro), as well as having ties with numerous academics across Colombia working on other heteronymic authors.

20. The universities and academics • In addition, the Universidad de los Andes has a strong postgraduate community and diaspora who have benefited from the expertise in heteronymy at their institution and have, in several cases, gone on to be develop this interest in other universities, including in the US. • The aim of this collaboration is thus to foster dialogue between these different scholars and the authors they study, with the goals of furthering understanding of the divergent implications and uses of this mode of writing in different sociohistorical contexts, and opening up new ways to theorise the practice of heteronymy.

21. Building on the collaboration • The collaboration was inaugurated with a one-day Symposium held at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, as part of the city’s Semana de las Artes y las Humanidades in April 2018. This event brought together academics from the groups mentioned above, as well as practising poets and dramatists. The project has thus begun to spread beyond the field of poetry to engage with and question the ramifications of heteronymy in theatre and as a political practice.

22. Further collaboration • The lead collaborators Nicholas Roberts and Mario Barrero are currently working on publishing the papers given at that event in a special journal edition in Colombia, and a further conference, taking up directions signalled in 2018, is being planned. • This work is part of a broader collaboration between Durham University and the University of Los Andes which includes an active student exchange which has been on-going for several years.

23. MAPPING UK HIGHER EDUCATION ENGAGEMENT WITH colombia Case studies • @UUKIntl