Academic chair: Christian Wejse

Ass. professor Christian Wejse, DXept. of Public Health: Academic Chair for Global Health Knowledge Hub (see PURE-profile).

Why did you decide to get involved in Circle U.?

First and foremost because I feel strongly about international collaboration, I think it's incredibly fruitful to work with colleagues in other countries on specific projects or somewhat larger visions. And then of course, it’s just amazing that the research area I’ve worked to develop at AU for a number of years, Global Health, has been selected as one of the three prioritised themes in the collaboration, and so of course I’m going to take that on. 

What are the overall objectives of your project?

• Together with the six other strong European partners, to develop the joint knowledge hub for global health
• Promote teaching and research into the major global health problems in order to create better health for all and to combat health inequality
• Promote student involvement in both research and teaching, especially through the development of the Summer University concept and the promotion of exchange of individual clinics and research programmes
• Bring AU’s established research network into play in relation to collaboration with the Circle U partners and possibly other similar networks
• Promote the establishment of new networks and research consortia that can form the basis for major grant applications, such as HORIZON, EDCTP and COST 

Are there any particular academic strengths among the Circle U. partners that make the project particularly interesting and promising? 

Virtually all of the partners have strong teaching and research environments within Global Health, with independent Master's programmes and PhD courses that we can learn from and develop a teaching partnership around.

But some are extremely strong, such as Berlin, where Charité is one of Europe's largest university hospitals and a leader in research and treatment in a number of areas, such as COVID-19. At the Pasteur Institute, Université de Paris has one of the world's leading players in the form of the Center for Global Health, which delivers top research on  pandemics with a strong interdisciplinary focus. Kings College in London is leading Global Mental health, Louvain in Brussels is strong on migrant health, and Oslos Centre for Global Health has a strong position on the importance of diversity in Global health and the implementation of the Un sustainable Development Goals (SDG). There is so much exciting potential for collaborations in these areas and interesting opportunities for developing joint educational initiatives, for example in the form of joint Summer Schools.

In which areas will it be possible for your AU colleagues to get involved in the project?

Well, of course the idea is to establish pan-European universities with a shared knowledge database and educational collaboration, which will make it much easier to collaborate across the universities involved; the way to think about it is that our as our usual network of AU colleagues has now been expanded by the addition of strong international partners.

So it would make a lot of sense for AU’s researchers to zero in on who’s working at our partner universities within their area and reach out to collaborate, for example through network and consortium agreements in connection with major applications to Horizon, and in particular in relation to grants for the EU’s COST networks. Specifically, it could also be about offering new AU Summer University Courses that involve lecturers from Circle U. universities or are offered through  summer schools that are even more collaborative, for example online.

What opportunities will AU students have to get involved in the project?

I believe that there’s a lot of potential in students’ involvement in the Circle U collaboration, first and foremost by ensuring good access to taking courses and exchanges at the partner universities, and many students will have better opportunities to work with things like theses and research projects at partner universities,, for example during international exchanges for graduate students. One objective is also to develop student-based courses like what’s already in place, such as Summer University, and this will probably be developed further.

Have you though at about how you will get researchers and students involved in Circle U. activities?

On the practical level, first and foremost it will be about making sure there are functional exchange and collaboration agreements in place so there can be an easy flow of students and lecturers between the Circle U. partner universities, and another goal might be to establish 10 new Summer Schools, to begin with within the primary themes the Circle U. partnership focuses on (Democracy, Climate, global Health), but also on sub-themes, such as Inequality, Pollution, Migration, Sustainability (SDG), Pandemics and Epidemics of Non-infectious Disease. 

I hope to be able to involve students and researchers in other small and large-scale educational initiatives, from symposia to proper joint courses, and I also think that we should share our experiences from good 'Aarhus models' in the context of the partnerships, such as the research year for medical students and ‘twinning’ within PhD projects by establishing Master's thesis courses as well as a student research year and joint Circle U. PhD courses.

And then as you know, AU has a variety of interdisciplinary research centres (iNANO, ARC, CIRRAU, DANDRITE, MINDLAB, iSEQ, IMC, PIT and UrbNet), and it’ll now be possible for them to strengthen the interdisciplinary aspects with competencies from Circle U. universities. So I hope to get the centres involved in developing collaborative projects. At Health, five strong research networks have been established (the cardiovascular network, the inflammation network, the network on food and nutrition, the network on personalised medicine, NeuroCampus Aarhus) where there are good opportunities for incorporating Global Health in their strategies, which is something they’re interested in.

Perhaps it will even be possible to develop new interdisciplinary research centres and research networks across the CircleU collaboration.