UC Santa Cruz hosts Queen’s University Belfast delegation to pursue faculty-driven partnership opportunities

Following the UK Faculty Seminar Away in April 2024, UC Santa Cruz welcomed a delegation from Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) to facilitate ongoing faculty-driven dialogue on research and expansion of academic collaboration between the two institutions.

The visit, the first of three anticipated reciprocal visits, was hosted in cooperation with several of the UC Santa Cruz faculty who traveled to QUB as part of the Faculty Seminar Away, and provided the opportunity to introduce QUB faculty to additional counterparts at UC Santa Cruz,  explore possibilities for additional academic and research collaborations across a range of disciplines, and to solidify plans for future work together.

The delegation from QUB, led by Associate Pro Vice Chancellor Professor Michael Alcorn, was greeted by UC Santa Cruz Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Lori Kletzer during a welcome meeting that set the tone for a day filled with meaningful dialogue and exploration of shared academic and research goals.

In her remarks, Kletzer highlighted the significance of the visit. “We are excited to support faculty-to-faculty engagement with Queen’s University Belfast,” she said. “International, interdisciplinary approaches are key to solving the world’s greatest challenges and creating enriching experiential learning and research opportunities for our students.”

Alcorn echoed this sentiment, noting that QUB is eager to collaborate with UCSC, particularly in areas where the institutions’ strengths align. “We see great potential in working together across a variety of fields, including history, arts, and computational media,” he said. “Our universities are both known for innovative approaches to research and education, and we are eager to build on these synergies.”

UC Santa Cruz faculty members who made up the first cohort of the Faculty Seminar Away program were involved in planning a series of breakout discussions and focused conversations that allowed faculty from both institutions to dive into potential areas for collaboration, including joint research projects and shared resources for innovation in History, Computational Media and the Arts.

Olwen Purdue, Professor of Social History and founder and Director of the QUB Centre for Public History and the MA in Public History addressed an audience of faculty and graduate students, sharing her considerable insights on teaching and program development. With the UC Santa Cruz department’s recent effort to develop its own master’s program, Purdue’s advice and expertise are timely and demonstrate the tremendous value of partnerships like QUB, which position academics to learn from each other and share best practices and new approaches.

UC Santa Cruz Assistant Professor Kathleen Gutierrez also spoke, highlighting her work with the Watsonville is in the Heart, a community-engaged research initiative, and Cowell Provost and Professor Alan Christy shared work on The Okinawa Memories Initiative, a collaborative, international public history project.

“One of the things that I love about Santa Cruz is the inter-disciplinary campus culture that leverages faculty and student-driven ideas to produce some of our best initiatives, said Professor of History Marc Matera. “I look forward to seeing opportunities for faculty and students to travel to Belfast where exciting new ideas can take shape.”

Professor of Computational Media Sri Kurniawan hosted Dr. Darragh Lydon, Lecturer in the School of Arts at QUB, to give a presentation to the Computational Media department about the new interdisciplinary research facility Medialab at QUB where work is underway to develop a center for games technologies.

Looking forward, both institutions are eager to continue exploring avenues of collaboration, with plans for more visits, shared research initiatives, and cross-disciplinary projects. For example, Kurniawan and Lydon are exploring grant funding as well as models to pilot a graduate student exchange beginning this spring and into summer. Additionally, Professor of Performance, Play, and Design Patty Gallagher and Professor of Music Ben Leeds Carson will travel to QUB in May of 2025 to perform An Iliad, a performance they debuted at UC Santa Cruz. Other avenues include leveraging QUB’s expertise in digital arts with UC Santa Cruz’s cutting-edge research in human-computer interaction and interactive media.

“I am delighted that our campuses have supported meaningful exploratory moments such as these. We are planting seeds of connection and collaboration,” said Gallagher. “Already, we see international research initiatives developing,  including culturally relevant art projects. We are inspired by these opportunities and look forward to thrilling collaborations in the future.”

These budding opportunities promise to enrich both UC Santa Cruz and Queen’s University Belfast in meaningful and innovative ways.


Broadening and deepening institutional partnerships with universities abroad is key to the UC Santa Cruz Strategic Plan for Internationalization.

Last modified: Nov 14, 2024