University of Glasgow Connect

Fostering a community of learning in nutrition

Through exploring a mutual interest in nutrition with two of our partners - University of West Indies and McGill University – we jointly developed and delivered research exchange days.

How it all started

In 2019, we signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the University of West Indies (UWI), recognising how the transatlantic trade of enslaved peoples had benefitted the University of Glasgow (UofG), and committing to work with UWI over a 20-year period to raise £20 million for research of relevance to the Caribbean nations. Subsequently, UWI and UofG jointly created the Glasgow-Caribbean Centre for Development Research.

"Each country has a rich history of nutrition research but also face challenges in the context of diet, nutrition and health."

Co-directors of the Centre, Professor Simon Anderson of UWI and Professor Bill Cushley of UofG, first mooted the possibility of a jointly-delivered Masters programme in Nutrition in 2020. Both universities have existing Masters in Nutrition programmes and each country has a rich history of nutrition research but also face challenges in the context of diet, nutrition and health. This led to a remote meeting with members of the UWI and UofG academic teams to discuss opportunities and possibilities.

Our aim was to foster engagement and promote research and teaching activities and interactions. In the early stages of discussion, Dr Kwesi Marshall and Dr Debbie Thompson from UWI’s Caribbean Institute for Health Research, and Dr Ada Garcia and Dr Alison Parrett, from UofG’s department of Human Nutrition, formed a committee with the aim of fostering a collaborative learning community.

A Postgraduate Nutrition Academic Research Exchange Day, which took place in June 2021, was the result. It enabled students from both universities to come together, share our passion for nutrition and learn from each other. We held a successful online meeting with three students from each university presenting their work on a range of nutrition topics including Crohn's disease, maternal infant feeding styles, breath tests for assessment of enteric dysfunction, estimating the risk of sarcopenia in elderly Jamaicans, low carbohydrate diets and interventions for improving diets.

Evolution of collaboration

In February 2022, UofG renewed an existing MoU with McGill University which aims to build capacity for collaboration in teaching and research activity. This presented a great opportunity to collaborate with McGill, which also has a Masters programme within the School of Nutrition.

With Dr Chelsia Gillis of McGill coming aboard, we held our second Postgraduate Nutrition Academic Research Exchange Day in June 2022, inviting two PhD students from each institution to present their research. We had an exciting and productive afternoon of talks and discussion covering diverse topics such as countermovement jumping and executive function in volleyball players, nutrition-based educational intervention on the obesity prevention, school preparedness for children with food allergy, plant protein bioavailability, acceptance and access to palm weevil larvae in communities in Ghana, and the impact of combinations of dietary fibres on digestive tolerance. These talks will be published as abstracts in McGill Journal of Medicine, an international, peer-reviewed publication run entirely by the medical and science students of McGill University.

We have also had two visits from UWI’s Professor Simon Anderson sparking positive discussion on possible research collaboration.

What happens in the future?

With two successful Postgraduate Academic Research Days under our belt, we are busy considering new directions and ideas for the collaboration. We hope that in time PhD students will lead on the Research Exchange Days and not only have presentations but also breakout rooms for discussion around methodology, study design, areas of interest etc.

We look forward in August to Dr Kwesi Marshall visiting UofG and hope to have some key discussions about pedagogy and teaching practice in our two different institutions. Options for the future include an exchange of students in PhD or Masters projects and some exchanges of student lectures.

The future is bright for the partnership, and we look forward to many years of successful collaboration with academic visits between partners and students to share our teaching and research experience and promote cultural exchange.