FO Thank you, Ana Elena. It's good to see you, still with the pandemic, only a little bit. This pandemic, as you know, has affected all of us in so many ways. As far as King’s international project is concerned, I can say that it has not all been negative. We have had some positives as well. Maybe we can start with the negatives, the not so positive aspects, which is what we have all experienced collectively, which is almost a sense of disconnect from a global space, unable to really see many of our partners in the way that we would normally see them, i.e. in person. Students who would normally travel to study abroad were disrupted in significant ways in the last year; partners themselves have also been disrupted. Even when the environment can allow for a measure of student travel, our partners also have been disrupted in such a way that our students cannot go there. Those are just examples of the negatives or the not so positives. Researchers are not able to travel for field research. But positively, people have innovated in different ways. Researchers are more within our research community. You can actually see how many of our research students –and some research staff as well—have taken up digital ethnography; they have had to look for ways of adapting. That adaptation has created hybrid arrangements for us. Many of our partners globally we can reach almost in real time in this way, online. We were not able to convene regionally or globally before very easily. Those who would not normally be present on our campus when we would have host meetings can now be present in just a matter of moments at any given day or month. At any given moment we can reach four regions of the world at the same time, a matter of [simple] planning. I think that has been a really positive thing for us. We have money to keep in touch with our partners. We have money to convene many more international students in this hybrid arrangement. It is not easy by any means; it means that we have had to ramp up the capacity to do that and we continue to learn in this arrangement. So, I would say that it has not been all bad, notwithstanding the negative dimensions of the pandemic itself and the disruptions to human life, the cost to human life in certain cases. Many of our colleagues have lost loved ones and also our students, and so it has been a difficult time; but it has also been a time to innovate for us at King's College London.

FO Let me say some of the hybrid experiences. For students in particular, [since we could not see partners], so [hybrid experiences were for] students because we can run a combination of online and virtual interactions. The different rooms in which we engage our students and bring them [in touch] with leading practitioners and leading academics globally from our partner institutions, who would [otherwise] have had to travel far to King’s in the first instance, that is one form of hybridity. The other form of hybridity has been at this moment a part of a collaboration supported by the British Council, for example, and one of our university partners in China, PKU, and seven African universities. We had co-created modules even before the pandemic, designed to be blended, so that it would be possible for King’s students based in different regions, and their own students as well, to sit in the classroom in those regions, to study on the same model that we created. Typically, they could also come to King’s, and we would go there, our students could go there. That will happen still sometime in the future, but the fact that it is possible for someone to be called, for us to have co-created models, as someone, say, in South Africa, can be teaching our own students online, and we can do the same for their students, has been great. And some of our own students or researchers, who are there, could be present on the King’s campus to participate in this. I would say that kind of a hybridity has been quite exciting. But it was already in the making even before; it has been a chance to go through the experience of testing it, even as we speak. So those are some of the examples that I can think of, but with many of our partners we have had to experiment together, in ways that are mutually beneficial.

FO No, well, some were, and some were not, but it allowed us to bring our new graduate teaching assistants, graduate researchers who were also preparing for an academic career. We had to bring them speedily to the table. We have worked with many more. At the moment we are also working with high flex classrooms, as we call it, that will allow us to teach both, i.e., with two audiences, one online and one with us physically in the classroom, which is what we are beginning to do from September on a number of our modules. That has been exciting. We have had the next generation of academics trained in real time, to step into any gaps that existed before, but actually to step up to the plate and be able to teach in a new mode, that has been quite exciting as well. Even I have my own sessions to train for high flex this week tomorrow, from tomorrow and next week as well. Nobody is left behind with this process; I will not be left behind for sure.

FO Without a doubt. I really do not see they will not. We had this debate in the last year with some colleagues who would think, well, it's a matter of time; things will return to normal; it will be business as usual. I think as time has passed, I think we are all moving to the realization that some of these changes will be for good. I do not see the same situation anymore. I give you this, Ana Elena, that the mad pace of travel that I had in the past three or four years was incredible, and that I would physically travel across several regions, which is what you expect in any case of an international Viceprincipal. That was not always going to be sustainable in the way many of us did it. It took its toll on the body but also on some of the processes too. It could have been better. Hybridity, even in the way we engage with our partners, is going to be the way of the future. I don't see myself traveling as much as I did before. The fact that you and I can engage with some of our colleagues in North America and in Latin America, that has changed the game. Now I can go to visit you in UNAM in person and stay for a week or two, but I may not be going to you for a conference of one day; I would do this online together. That also begins to allow us to contribute to sustainability in particular ways. I am excited about that possibility. Excellent. What has been the reaction of King's strategic partners internationally? I have to say, certainly, on the question of strategic partners. Maybe I should first elaborate on this a little bit. Strategic partnership for us has several dimensions. One is that it has been built from the ground up because the diversity of our students and our staff engage those partners. Suddenly you find there is a partner with our staff and those partners have interaction across more than three or more faculties. We embrace that as part of the potential for strategic partnerships because there is a natural inclination and synergy among the staff. That is the bottom-up type of trend, and so we can read the pattern based on what our staff have been doing with those partners in this period. It is a diversity of things that have been happening. Quite a number have worked online; they have co-designed programs, sometimes education programs, sometimes research projects. That is one type of strategic partnership; they are driven from below. Part of that drive from below is what created our regional networks across the university. We have nine regional networks based on the places where we find that our staff are present, regions where staff have been engaging. But the other kind of strategic partnership that we have has to do with alliances of institutions. We are part of university networks. We have co-created some alliances and those university networks that were natural part of our networks, like the Guild, a network of European universities; another one is the university alliance between King’s and six other university partners, mostly based in capital cities in Europe, which is part of emerging European universities networks, following the Macron initiative which is what Europe seems to be moving towards. Then of course is the one that we created as a natural part of our president's collaborating in particular ways, which generated some influence across the university. It is a plus alliance which is what we have with Arizona State University and the University of New South Wales. Those alliances have continued during the pandemic. We have embraced new ways of working virtually. In fact, one was made during this pandemic in that sense; secondly, some made before the pandemic were actually consolidated during the pandemic. That is Circle View. So, we have adapted, we have continued to work online. The last category of strategic partnerships are those partnerships that arose from bottom-up and top-down interest and engagement over the years. We have built a natural synergy with those partners; we would either we have presence in each other's universities, or we have joint funds for research collaboration, joint funds for education, collaboration particularly for research collaboration, which is the kind of initiative that we have had with the University of São Paulo and with UNAM. We are present in each other's universities. Your own presence here at King´s means a great deal to us and has allowed us to work together in proximity. You can also see that with the relationship we have with Berlin Humboldt University and so on. We have what we have with PKU, a health program in China, one of the very few that we have globally. We have a relationship in terms of joint Ph.D.s as well with some of these institutions, and that NUS Singapore has been another example of joint Ph. D., also with the University of Pretoria. A few universities are in different regions of the world and that is how broadly we conceive of strategic partnerships. Ultimately, the bottom-up and the top-down way, you begin to you build on the synergies and the energies emerging from that to create a really vibrant collaboration amongst a community of staff and students.

FO I firmly believe so. I witnessed the closure of that institute and that was very unfortunate, because we had a history in the UK. The University of London had been one of the the projects that helped us really secure our presence in Latin America and in very interesting ways. To see that closure was something that many of us found disappointing. There lies an opportunity, though, to ensure that what we have at King’s can really consolidate and convene some of those places that had collaborated with that institute in different ways. I think this is a major opportunity for us to ensure that the interest continues within the University of London but housed within King’s in particular. I really look forward to it. I have very much also appreciated the way uh ways in which you have worked together with the Brazilian Institute, so that both your institutes are able to produce something a unique kind of collaboration which will greatly enrich not just our partnerships, but also the international collaborations across the board that we have beyond Latin America into other regions as well.

AEGT Brilliant. What would you expect of UNAM´s collaboration? Is there any particular area that you think would be crucial in the next few years or in general?

FO I actually think this might be one of the unintended consequences of the pandemic, that as we begin to innovate, we see a situation where we find formulas to consolidate our relationships, and i think they should actually anchor both education and research in ways that we bring a community of students from across several regions together, but also bring a community of partners from across several regions together. I for one expect that as one of the things emerging from this multi-country co-creation of models is a major focus on global leadership. I expect that with UPS, with PKU, the University of Pretoria, with Paris. Actually, I should have mentioned that university, Université de Paris is one of the strategic partners that I was talking about that we have a mutual partnership fund together, but that we realize with this small group of partners we become a collective to provide global leadership ideas, both in terms of education and research, and influence around SDGs, and actually become a critical mass of institutions that provide global influence around particular ideas and agendas. That is my big vision for UNAM, that we use our core presence at King’s, and the fact that we have that presence which we need to leverage well in Mexico as well, which on our part we need to do more to leverage so that we begin to use this to merge with other global partners to do something really exciting together. I think that the internal collaboration that you have had together, UNAM and the Brazil Institute forms a very rich basis for some of this as well. I want to tap into that in the next year, for example.

AEGT Excellent, because there is also a very particular interest in things like sustainability, climate change, medical sciences, health policy…

FO Absolutely, yes, what we know for sure is that this drive to ensure sustainability for the world, for the planet and of a whole variety of our own existence on the planet, this is a short drive. Universities must go a long way to contribute towards this in terms of research, but also in terms of behavioral change driving that together. It is going to be pertinent, but also, I think the pandemic has shown us some of the major gaps in how we relate to each other in the world. The sharp north-south divide that we see in terms of vaccine diplomacy or vaccine nationalism, whatever you call it, but even research around vaccines, let alone how they tested and how they distributed, that has shown gaping holes and what I want to suggest is that, if you look at the partnerships that I mentioned across the globe, you have seen that there is something about the neighborhood of Europe, that is one dimension of it, outside of it you see different regions of the world, but a visible part of those different regions of the world is that you see our deep interest in dealing with the majority south too, all right the majority of the world, and I think this is something that we need to band together around to have some of the most strategic research ideas, so some of the most innovative and original research ideas that will make a direct impact on questions of sustainability, of inequalities across regions, but also inequalities in society as well. These are some of the pressing issues of our times, but I think that if we have this critical mass globally working towards this just a handful of universities that are mutually collaborating around issues of mutual interest, but also we want to collectively make a difference in the world that begins to change things. I think the pandemic has laid this bare: global health issues, social medicine aspects of it, the social dimensions of those global health issues, they have impacted our societies. As universities that want to make a difference, that want to contribute part of the social contract that we have with the societies, that will make our societies better. I think collectively we have that ambition; it is something I very much look forward to.

AEGT Excellent, thank you very much indeed for this interview. It is very kind of you and I think you have touched upon all the main ideas and I look forward to seeing you in person, perhaps in the not too distant future.

FO Very much, I look forward very much to seeing you. I believe that 20 months or so, certainly more than 18 months have passed since we last saw each other, but thankfully we are still able to interact in this way. I look forward to seeing you in person soon.

AEGT Me too thank you, thank you for your time.