FJWU, Rawalpindi
FJWU, Rawalpindi
Fatima Jinnah Women University is an institution with a vision to promoting and facilitating studies and research in various fields of Higher Education for women. It aims to advance learning to the highest level attainable through research, teaching and dissemination of knowledge for the benefit of women in particular and society in general. The women are trained to become mainstream citizens with confidence about their position and status in society. Women are proving themselves in every field of life. The real empowerment of women lies in the ability of women to explore their talents and develop their potential to the optimal level. The decision to choose a field and then grow and develop in the chosen field puts a lot of responsibility on you and we try to prepare our young women to accept this responsibility with belief in their ability and faith in their efforts.
Research collaboration for Sustainability Development in Women’s Health & Education
Meaningful sustained developments in public health and achievement of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development requires all development sectors and institutions to work together in an integrated manner. Public institutions cannot work towards a successful sustainable development agenda in the absence of a shared vision and shared goals across disciplines and sectors. SDG 17, which reads “Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development”, recognizes multi-stakeholder partnerships as important vehicles for mobilizing and sharing knowledge, expertise, technologies and financial resources to support the achievement of the sustainable development goals in all countries, particularly developing countries.
The Partnership
This partnership proposes to develop academic and research partnership for fostering strong and effective research in the areas of women development in particular to health and education. Through this partnership, we aim to develop a critical thinking approach among students and faculty, to enhance analytical skills, research, and knowledge translation building on each other’s experience and available resources.
Fatima Jinnah Women University (FJWU) located in Rawalpindi Pakistan, has a long-standing commitment to empower women through quality higher education in various fields of study with research and innovation at par with international standards. The university not only provides a conducive learning environment to young women to attain highest level of education but it also provides forums [to over 5000 students and faculty members] to get exposure of contemporary trends in research. We envision FJWU becoming a leading hub for innovative and collaborative research that would focus on global challenges while contributing to the contemporary societal needs of Pakistan. Our mission is to promote impactful interdisciplinary research by facilitating debate and discussion on different aspects of academic and social innovation that are inclusive, accountable, sustainable, and effective in order to promote research collaborations within and outside the university.
Fatima Jinnah Women University is an institute with vision to promote and facilitate studies and research in various fields of higher education. It is a proud legacy and becoming a part of a vibrant professional atmosphere. Fatima Jinnah Women University aims to provide quality education to the women of Pakistan. It aims to advance learning to the highest level attainable through research, teaching and dissemination of knowledge for the benefit of women in particular and society in general. The women are trained to become mainstream citizens with confidence about their position and status in society.
Women are proving themselves in every field of life. The real empowerment of women lies in the ability of women to explore their talents and develop their potential to the optimal level. The decision to choose a field and then grow and develop in the chosen field puts a lot of responsibility on you and we try to prepare our young women to accept this responsibility with belief in their ability and faith in their efforts. University is the training ground where you are prepared to face the challenges of the real world.
Established in 1877, the University of Manitoba (UM) is the oldest university in Western Canada and has been active in international programmatic research, programming and knowledge translation since the early 1980s. UM’s Institute for Global Public Health (IGPH) focuses on scientific approaches to policy development and program implementation and has extensive global experience in research, policy development and public health program implementation. This field experience has been translated into program guidelines and policies that have been incorporated into national policies in several countries around the globe. Over years, the University of Manitoba has strongly emerged as a leader in global health, building on its considerable strengths in population and public health, infectious disease research and immunology. It has forged important partnerships with global health policy leaders, national government agencies, international agencies (i.e. Gates Foundation, World Bank, US Centers for Disease Control) and key research institutions in Canada and abroad to create essential platforms for research and knowledge translation.
Our Approach: A working research group
Both institutions UoM & FJWU are looking forward to engage in a joint partnership, building upon each other’s experiences; influences, and relationships to strengthen human resources for women development particularly educating them in improvement of women’s health in Pakistan and globally. FJWU has an evident presence and collaboration with civil society and local community through a structured framework of community work and its mobilization. Thus university has potential to actively engage the students and faculty in community based innovative projects and its dissemination in the proposed domains. While FJWU is unique in its pragmatic approach and practices for academic research, despite the keen desire; the visibility of faculty and students stays insignificant in research publications and reception of grant projects. As a result of many consultative meetings and interactive seminars on research and development, it has been suggested to develop an inbuilt research mechanism in the institution’s education system. The proposed partnership will commit itself to both research and academic excellence and will provide opportunities for both students and faculty to get involved in research collaborations and develop a platform to share knowledge.
“A working research group chaired by the Vice Chancellor FJWU and Director IGPH at the UM will be developed, which will serve as a platform for research, innovation, training and knowledge translation, by combining resources from FJWU and UM with local and international expertise”
In line with the vision of Fatima Jinnah Women University i.e., to encourage research and innovation for building future generations of Pakistan, this research group aspires to achieve excellence in multidisciplinary research and innovation across Pakistan. All academic departments of the FJWU will be invited to participate in such a manner, that research is embedded within ongoing academic programs to foster collaboration and accelerate knowledge translation using a “program science” approach. In particular, this group will provide opportunities to faculty members and graduate students [of various disciplines] to work collaboratively in this proposed model of research culture grounded in convergence beyond interdisciplinary research. This group will also serve as a resource for innovation in women’s health and development issues. At the global level, the group will be connected with the UM’s “Global Program Science Network” and will be linked to partners from leading academic institutions, senior policy makers from global normative bodies (e.g. WHO) and funders. Such multi-faceted relationships among faculty members across disciplines and/or across higher educational institutions—involving graduate students—are expected to foster a cohesive research culture at FJWU in particular and in academic spheres of Pakistan in general.
This platform will be physically housed within the Fatima Jinnah Women’s University and will have administrative and technical support provided to the platform by both partners. Research will stay at the forefront of this collaboration agenda which would follow up on the suggestions and recommendations provided by the research working group as well as National research priorities set by the country for Women health and development. The following figure presents the strategic design of this collaborative partnership, with its core work areas.
Key work areas:
A – Identifying key issues related to women’s health and development
One of the key issues that the group will focus on is the identification of key issues related to women’s health and development and will generate evidence to address information gaps through cutting edge research and innovation. This will be done through discussions with various stakeholders, conducting research seminars and conducting literature reviews and library research on key women and health related issues. As an outcome, a research agenda will be formulated for developing a coherent research strategy.
C – Dissemination and using research results
In the long run, the participants of research group would be expected to show case and publish research work both to highlight their profile and supervisory services with a greater intent to give back to the academia and community. Such practices in research and publication will subsequently raise the research related standards of the university as well as improve the visibility of women researchers from Pakistan on the map of the world. On a broader level, another important area of focus will be the use of “data for action” to make better use of data to inform decision-making and evaluate performance. This will be achieved by working closely with the policy makers providing evidence-based inputs to improve policy and public health systems.
B – Developing research proposals and secure funding to conduct research
Conducting collaborative research would be one major thematic areas of work conducted by this platform. Once a research agenda is formulated and agreed upon, the next steps would be to conduct pragmatic research to generate high quality data and evidence, and quickly translating these research findings into evidence-based policies. As discussed above, this research group will not only be engrossed in developing national and international cooperation and collaboration but they will also be engaged writing proposal for research grants for funding. Some national and international level grants available would include but not limited to the following:
- HEC NRPU grants
- Local Challenge Fund (LCF)
- Grand Challenge Fund (GCF)
- Technology Transfer Support Fund (TTSF)
- Pak-Turk Researchers’ Mobility Grant Program
- Pak-France Peridot Research Program
- Information and Communication Technologies
- Biodiversity Exploration and Discovery
- IDRC
D – Capacity Building
Capacity development in academic partnerships is the key for fostering strong and effective public health practice and policy development. Through this partnership, both FJWU and UM commit to bring resources together to develop research capacity within Pakistan. We recognize that through this collaboration, both institutions have the potential to offer a wide range of learning opportunities to both their faculty and students which will inevitably produce a diversity of outcomes. A number of activities would be conducted:
- Organize research seminar, talks and roundtable discussions on themes and theorists
- Conduct workshops, and training sessions on research skills
- Provide opportunities for students to get involved in field research to get hands on experience on data collection, data analysis and report development
- Start research internship programs for students
- Develop capacity for Pragmatic research by conducting joint research studies