Three years of Twinning: Durham University and Zaporizhzhia National University

We are tremendously proud of our partnership with Zaporizhzhia National University (ZNU). As soon as we were twinned with our friends at Zaporizhzhia, it became clear to us how much of an interest there was in Durham for collaborating with our Ukrainian partner.  

Our UUKi-funded ‘Building Research Capacity and Resilience with Partners during Conflict’ project was a truly interactive, interdisciplinary programme, which saw a range of pan-university research collaborations across law, history, geography, psychology, finance and biosciences. Despite the incredibly challenging situation faced by our friends in Zaporizhzhia, we were thrilled that over 30 ZNU researchers, academics and students came to Durham and took part in workshops and summer schools over the course of 2023.  

As a result of this project, we were delighted to welcome a ZNU engineering and computer science delegation in 2024, which is expanding our research collaborations in renewable energy and emerging technologies as well as mainstreaming our partnership with ZNU colleagues across all of our faculties. Our Institute of Hazard, Risk and Resilience has undertaken online training workshops for ZNU practitioners on how to use a Durham-donated Ricoh Theta X 360-degree camera to document the current realities of life in Ukraine. As well as this, our Institute of Advanced Study is working with ZNU to develop its own multi-disciplinary platform.

Our partnership has also provided our and ZNU’s Professional Services staff the opportunity to gain exposure to internationalisation and share best practice. The diverse range of areas on which our staff have engaged – student wellbeing and support, student governance, marketing and branding, estates management, energy efficiency, human resource (HR) policies, and equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) – reinforces the strength and breadth of our partnership.  

We are proud of our vibrant partnership with ZNU. This term, we have welcomed two ZNU bioscience students as part of our inward mobility scheme.

We were delighted that our ZNU friends were able to spend time recently with our Human Resources and Equality, Diversity and Inclusion teams to help develop a bespoke ZNU leadership programme and share best practice on leadership development, diversity and inclusion. As a result of this visit, ZNU has developed a Leadership Programme Action Plan, with which Durham colleagues will provide ongoing peer support. We look forward to welcoming Prof. Olena Tupakhina, ZNU’s Vice-President for International Affairs, to Durham later this year to coincide with our Inclusive Durham Festival.

From energy and conflict resolution to history and biosciences, the strength of our relationship means that researchers from our two institutions view each other as the natural partners of choice with whom to collaborate. We are excited to be working together on new external funding opportunities, which will reinforce further our partnership.

We are very honoured to have been partnered with Zaporizhzhia National University and are incredibly humbled by the resilience that our Zaporizhzhia friends show. Our Twinning arrangement is much more than a partnership. It is about true friendship which is connecting our students, professional staff and researchers from across the university and the local community. Our ZNU friends are very much at the forefront of our minds given the incredibly challenging circumstances they are facing on the ground.

Our partnership and support will continue for the long term. This is a partnership based on respect, equity and humility. What we have achieved in the first three years of our partnership has delivered real-world outcomes for Durham and Zaporizhzhia. We look forward to the next three years of our partnership and beyond.