Looking beyond Brexit: welcoming the University of Strathclyde to BK City
On 20 June 2018, BK Bouwkunde and the University of Strathclyde celebrated the launch of the policy research foundation EPRC Delft. EPRC Delft will reinforce the existing research and teaching cooperation between the universities and open up new opportunities for the institutions to carry out shared research after the UK leaves the European Union.
“We are determined to maintain the long-standing research and policy relationships with European institutes and government departments that we have built up over four decades,” says Professor John Bachtler, head of EPRC, “this foundation will ensure that these continue despite Brexit”.
The two universities already work together on a number of research activities including the COHESIFY project, which includes staff from Strathclyde University and BK Bouwkunde. “EPRC Delft offers exciting opportunities for an even closer collaboration between two leading universities in Europe,” says Professor Vincent Nadin, head of the department of Urbanism, “the research portfolios of the two universities are complimentary and share a number of common areas of interest such as territorial cooperation and governance.”
EPRC Delft is a partnership between Strathclyde’s European Policies Research Centre (EPRC) and BK Bouwkunde. Multiple staff members from the University of Strathclyde will be based at the Urbanism department in Delft.
About EPRC
The European Policies Research Centre (EPRC) is a multidisciplinary and multilingual research institute in the School of Government & Public Policy in Strathclyde’s Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences. Originally founded in 1978.
EPRC’s staff have expertise in a broad range of fields, including public policy, political science, economics, geography, planning, business and law.EPRC in specialises in comparative research in a range of European policies, notably regional development policy, regional innovation, competition policy, territorial cooperation, financial instruments and governance.
About COHESIFY
Delft University of Technology and the University of Strathclyde have recently finalised a 2-year research project funded under the EU’s Horizon 2020 Framework Programme. This project, with the acronym COHESIFY, aimed to understand what citizens think of European Structural and Investment Funds, which invest more than €50 billion a year in projects creating jobs, promoting innovation, improving the environment and upgrading infrastructure in regions across the EU.