Professor Joshua Mok, Vice President and Professor Leng Ming-ming, Dean of Faculty of Business, visited three leading universities in the UK to develop stronger links with these institutions for enhancing research and postgraduate studies. At the University of Essex, Professor Mok and Professor Leng met the senior management of the School of Business and Faculty of Humanities and colleagues from the Partnership Office. Productive conversations among colleagues from both universities led to an agreement to promote PhD student exchange, joint PhD, joint master and joint undergraduate degree programmes.
The visit to the University of Bath also bore fruits, including a two-year action plan for the Joint Research Centre for Education in China and East Asia, co-launched by University of Bath and Lingnan University in March 2019 at the Bath University. Centre Co-directors Professor Andrea Abbasand Xiulan, together with senior colleagues from Education Department Professor Hugh Lauder, joined the meeting with Professor Joshua Mok, Core International Member and Member of the Steering Committee of the Joint Research Centre, for conceiving research programmes and collaborative projects. Two broad research themes of “Higher Education, Labour Market and Sustainability” and “Well-being, Inclusion and Education” are the framework of the research programmes of the Centre. Agreements were reached to promote PhD student learning through the co-organisation of the International Summer School for Postgraduate Studies with a focus on research methodology at Lingnan University in June 2020, co-organising annual conference of the Joint Research Centre, and promoting student mobility through sending students from Bath to Lingnan to join the annual postgraduate student conference in March.
The visit to the Bath School of Management was just as productive. Agreements were reached to promote PhD student exchange, and to explore joint degrees in Doctor of Policy Studies (Lingnan) and Doctor of Business Administration in Higher Education Management (Bath). Collaboration was also explored in co-developing the Lingnan-Bath Master in International Higher Education and Management (IHEM) to enhance students’ international and comparative perspective and analytical ability regarding management issues in higher education.