RENKEI - the Japan-UK Research and Education Network for Knowledge Economy Initiatives

Climate change
Health

RENKEI has chosen “climate change” and “health” as its priority research themes. Both areas were specified in the Japan-UK Joint Declaration on Prosperity Cooperation  released in September 2017 when Prime Minister Theresa May visited Japan. Researchers from 12 member universities are sharing their work and developing networks for the creation of new joint research.

Japan

Kyoto University
Kyushu University
Nagoya University
Osaka University
Ritsumeikan University
Tohoku University

UK

University of Edinburgh
University of Leeds
University of Liverpool
Newcastle University
University of Southampton
* We are currently accepting applications from UK universities to become the sixth UK member.

Secretariat: British Council

The origin of RENKEI dates back to 2010 when the then Foreign Secretary William Hague visited Japan and both governments announced that British and Japanese university leaders would hold dialogues to share best practices in internationalisation and would promote student and researcher exchanges. In that year, the 2nd Japan-UK Higher Education Symposium was held at Kyushu University in Japan and university leaders identified a need for a new model of international university-industry partnerships. At this symposium, both UK and Japanese universities were openly invited to come forward to form a working group. 12 universities responded to this call and join an initiative to develop a new strategic bilateral partnership.

RENKEI was formally launched on 13 March 2012, with the British Council, Japan, as its secretariat, to meet the challenges of living in a complex, rapidly changing and globalized twenty-first century. Collaboration across sectors was becoming ever more important as the result of economic and societal changes. Through RENKEI projects, member universities in Japan and the UK have been committed to exploring how they can develop fresh and innovative engagement with third-party organisations such as industries, governments and social enterprises to address common societal challenges.  

Over its first 6 years, between 2012 and 2017, RENKEI served as an effective platform for the members to develop close networks especially through its annual face-to-face Steering Committee meetings. Such networks also led to strong partnerships between individual institutions. Member universities jointly organised a total of 12 workshops in the form of summer or spring schools, mainly targeting early career researchers including PhD students. More than 231 researchers from 12 member universities participated in the workshops organised by RENKEI working groups and 90 external bodies were engaged. The workshops received excellent feedback both from participants and organisers.

Building on the platform of multilateral collaboration developed during RENKEI’s first phase, members agreed to focus more specifically on the development of interdisciplinary research partnerships addressing some of the most pressing common challenges in climate change and health. The consortium is committed to engaging more proactively with industry, government, and wider stakeholders in Japan and the UK, in order to maximise the benefits of membership for institutions as a whole, as well as for the individual researchers participating in RENKEI activities.

Three workshops have been held on the topic of climate change (two face-to-face and one online), bringing in representatives of industry, national and local governments, and funding agencies to inform the discussions among participating researchers. At the second workshop, these discussions led to the development of several concrete research proposals, two of which were awarded RENKEI seed funding.

The first workshop on health will be held online in June 2021, focusing on patient safety, medicine and informatics, and ageing. We intend to also award seed funding to research proposals emerging from this workshop.