Global Academy
Our Global Academy is a platform for researchers around the world to come together to develop skills, ideas and connect.
We provide the time and space for you to think, develop your skills, and build relationships with other researchers from across disciplines and international borders.
Our opportunities will support you to implement bold new approaches to global challenges and become a leader in interdisciplinary research.
Our Global Academy may help you:
- develop, or further develop, skills for interdisciplinary research
- connect with researchers from other disciplines
- explore different methods to address complex challenges
- build networks across sectors
- develop your interdisciplinary learning and teaching materials
Opportunities
Within the Global Academy we have a number of opportunities for you to get involved, including the Crucible Programme, Insight Series, and Methods Series.
Crucible Programme
The Crucible programme is open to academic researchers from across career stages, who can commit to meeting three times over the course of six months, both online and in-person.
These sessions are structured to provide a mix of talks, facilitated sessions, and space and time to collaborate with other participants.
This programme is designed to create opportunities to build a network, develop interdisciplinary skills and approaches, and improve the visibility of your profile and research. Participants will also be supported in the development of innovative, interdisciplinary ideas.
What our participants say
“One of the things I’ve learnt is that I can actually collaborate with all different aspects of academia – so science, political science, economics. I think this programme will allow me to have a different lens through which I can view things.”
Dr Onkokame Mothobi, University of Witwatersrand
“It's definitely going to change the way [I work]. I think I'm going to listen more to people who don't do what I do and try to find those pathways and opportunities to work together. It has been life-changing.”
Dr Colleta Gandidzanwa, University of Pretoria
Watch interviews about interdisciplinary collaborations formed by researchers who met at the Crucible programme on our Horizon’s Institute Youtube channel.
What do our Crucible labs look like?
Lab 1: The Outward Facing Researcher
This Lab is focussed on getting to know each other and research areas. We explore how to be more accessible and share research through working with the media, policy and through public engagement. Activities include sharing methods and approaches to uncover novelty, and we have lots of time to collaborate.
Lab 2: The Interdisciplinary Researcher
We hear from academics that have interdisciplinary research projects and who share their ideas about how it can work, and sometimes doesn't! We develop interdisciplinary projects with a view to pump priming preliminary ideas.
Lab 3: Innovative Interdisciplinary Researcher
We invite speakers to this Lab who have applied their research in different ways along the innovation pipeline. There’s time to collaborate and further develop ideas.
Apply for the Crucible programme
Crucible programme applications for the 2024/25 cohort are now open. For more information on the programme and how to apply, please visit our Global Academy Crucible Programme page.
Insight Series
Our Insight Series is a monthly online session where speakers explore challenges faced by interdisciplinary researchers, and share some of their experiences in overcoming these challenges.
Open to anyone with an interest in interdisciplinary research, sessions are held on Zoom on the first Tuesday of every month during the academic year.
If you would like to join our Insight Series sessions, you can visit the Horizon Institute Events page for more information, or sign up for the Horizon Institute newsletter on Microsoft Forms.
Methods Series
Collaboration between different disciplines can be challenging.
Our Methods series are online, interactive sessions, which offer an opportunity to share methods and explore how data is collected, filtered, analysed and presented in each discipline.
Find out when our next session is available on the Horizons Institute Events page.
Sponsors
We would like to thank David Fine for his support of the Global Academy programme which has established the Peter Gray and David Fine Innovation Fellowships, for Fellows from the University of Witwatersrand.