Australia
The University of Exeter has a strong presence in Australia across several research, education, industry and alumni links. The largest and most notable of these is our flagship partnership with the University of Queensland, where we have come together to establish the QUEX Institute; an initiative designed to bolster our joint global research impact.
The QUEX Institute of Global Sustainability and Wellbeing, is a pioneering collaboration between The University of Queensland and the University of Exeter. Officially launched in 2017 as a high-profile strategic partnership, QUEX seeks to address significant global challenges through interdisciplinary collaborative research, academic, student and professional staff mobility; high-impact policy publications; and industry and community engagement.
The Institute currently has four themes - Healthy Living, Global Environmental Futures, Digital Worlds and Disruptive Technologies, and Mineral Security and Sustainability - around which research is focussed. Themes have been chosen in response to analysis highlighting areas of interest for research, as well as to reflect expertise at the University of Queensland and the University of Exeter.
Central to achieving the QUEX Institute vision is nurturing a strong pipeline of the next generation of researchers, who will benefit from our combined strengths in teaching, research, business engagement and entrepreneurship. The QUEX Institute has therefore directed a large proportion of its investment to sustain multiple cohorts of PhD candidates, a total of 52 by early 2023, to strengthen connections between research groups at the partner universities.
QUEX investment has also been allocated to collaborative research projects through a number of seeding funding schemes and as of mid-2023 has supported upwards of 40 research initiatives of varying scale, which have in turn gone on to attract more than $30 million in external funding and boast over 200 QUEX-related co-publications.
The QUEX Institute also encourages links between professional services teams to promote sharing best practices and staff development, with 19 Professional Services Fellowships awarded thus far.
