Third BRICS Network University conference was held in the University of Stellenbosch, South Africa, from July 5-7, 2018.
The conference was organized by the South African Ministry of Higher Education and Training in association with the University of Stellenbosch. The theme of the conference was “Unlocking BRICS Universities’ Partnerships: Postgraduate Education Opportunities and Challenges”.
The aim was to develop and consolidate the BRICS education agenda as well as highlight strategic research areas for BRICS collaboration in order to gain comparative advantage in the global knowledge system.
Six International Thematic Groups (ITG’s) took part in the conference, including one on Economics. The meeting has been attended by participants who represented 9 university participants of the BRICS NU, including Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG) and University of Campinas (UNICAMP) from Brazil; Higher School of Economics (HSE) and People’s Friendship University of Russia (RUDN University) from Russia, Beijing Normal University (BNU), Henan University (HENU) and Hunan University (HNU) from China; the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Rhodes University (RU) from South Africa.
Two sessions of the ITG meeting was chaired by Lawrence Edwards (UCT), Alina Shcherbakova (HSE) and Sergey Chernikov (RUDN University). The participants discussed the progress and milestones, student and staff mobility, joint research project on teaching economics in BRICS countries, communication and website, the Road Map forming and approval. The following proposals were made by ITG:
- To adopting a common ITG Economics research theme – Globalisation, Development, Inequality: Lessons from the BRICS in order to provide joint papers in the future
- To organize a prior research workshop before each BRICS NU Conference as it was made in the University of Cape Town on July 3-4 2018
- To encourage participation in national/university conferences through special sessions related to the BRICS research agenda
- To facilitate mobility of students within BRICS NU through signing the multilateral student exchange agreement proposed by Russia ITG Chairs, after this undertaking is approved by the IGB
- To increase the number of intermediate ITG communications in between the annual BRICS NU conferences through inline means (Skype conference calls and discussions in Slack).