This visiting professorship funded by the Leverhulme Trust consists a one-year programme of work being undertaken by Professor Nematollah Azizi from the University of Kurdistan under the supervision of Professor Michael Osborne, Director of CR&DALL.

The core aim of the programme is to enhance understanding of how universities can better contribute to sustainable economic, social and cultural development of their host cities through analysis of distinct approaches that have been taken in Iran in the context of Islamic thinking around culture and spirituality, identifying practices that are transferable to the UK. By contrast, the programme also seeks to explore potentially transferability of practices from the UK to Iran.

The specific objectives are as follows:

• To examine the factors within universities that lead to successful knowledge exchange between universities and cities, in both Iran and the UK aligning these to the localisation of the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including the influence of:
  • national and regional policy frameworks;
  • economically and socially driven performance targets o culture and spirituality;
  • university and urban structures for leadership;
  • the embeddedness of service to local communities within learning programmes;
  • mechanisms to promote engagement.
• There will be particular attention given to what can be learnt and practiced by university academics, students and administrators at the University of Glasgow as they strive for more effective knowledge exchange with urban communities through assessing principles of teaching and learning, and of engagement from an Islamic perspective;
• There will be a particular effort given to approaches that will enhance engagement with Muslim communities in Glasgow, and that will make contributions to the university’s efforts in decolonialising the curriculum. Contributions will also be made to similar endeavours in community engaged research in other nations of the UK.

Lessons learnt from UK practices will be analysed for potential transfer to Iran. It is funded by the Leverhulme Trust with £138,625.