The British Council in collaboration with the Higher Education Commission (HEC) will organise 27 training workshops on research in the higher education institutions across Pakistan to promote the indigenous research culture. Manager British Council Lahore Programmes, Uzma Siddiqi while addressing the participants of first workshop on "Building Sustainable Research Networks" announced at the Government College University (GCU) Lahore here on Tuesday.
Siddiqi said that the workshops are being held under the British Council's funded project INSPIRE-Pakistan (International Strategic Partnership in Research and Education in Pakistan). She said that three of 27 workshops would be held at GCU for which a university economist, Aqueel Imtiaz Wahga, has been selected as the master trainer and co-ordinator under Talented Researcher Exchange Programme.
Meanwhile, a large number of young scholars and professionals from eight institutions including State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), Punjab University, Kinniard College and Next Bridge Software House attended the first two-day training workshop at GCU. The purpose of the workshop was to guide academicians and young researchers on developing quality research proposals, which lead to improved proposal writing skills and consequently high quality research work.
The workshop also taught modern techniques for sustainable international collaboration, bidding for external sources of funding, inter-cultural communication and developing strategic skills like influencing, negotiating, presenting and embedding international partnership impact across institutions for developing and maintaining international networks.
Vice Chancellor GCU Professor Dr Khalid Aftab highlighted the importance of research, saying that research by universities is the primary source of innovation and knowledge throughout the world. He said that Pakistani universities should also concentrate more and more on research as the creativity of academia deliver social, cultural and economic benefits to the society.
Professor Aftab said that in the field of research his expectations are higher from the young faculty members as they are more energetic and comparatively have intellectual potential. He advised the participants to actively participate in such training workshops to keep themselves equipped with modern and rather practical knowledge.
Asif Saeed, Head of Economics Department GCU Lahore asked the participants to make the best use of the learning opportunity to further strengthen their collaborative research skills as well as networking with other professionals for future projects. Later, Dean Faculty of Arts and Social Science Dr Khalid Perviaz distributed certificates among the participants of the workshop.