For the next four years, the University will continue to take on cohorts of MSF staff for blended learning through its Leadership Education Academic Partnership (LEAP) Programme in Humanitarian Practice, a collaboration between the University’s Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute (HCRI), the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and MSF.
The new partnership aims to build on the benefits of staff exchange, stimulating academic input in research and development projects at MSF, and the creation of joint seminars and events, with staff from both organisations holding a mutual presence on steering committees and bodies such as MSF’s internal think tank, Centre de Réflexion sur l’Action et les Savoirs Humanitaires (CRASH).
Professor Nicolas Lemay-Hébert, Executive Director of HCRI, said: “The HCRI is committed to bringing together a broad range of expertise to facilitate positive global change and improve worldwide crisis response.
“Our part in helping to train MSF’s leaders through our multi-disciplinary approach to humanitarian solutions is an essential part of this mission. This partnership will benefit from a sharing of valuable expertise and resources and will work to accelerate that global change.”
The partnership also builds on what is an already-strong student engagement with MSF through Friends of MSF Manchester, a student-led society for students interested in international crises, health equity and humanitarian work.
This new arrangement will allow the University to influence humanitarian activity by providing world-class research and resources to support MSF’s global humanitarian work in crises such as the civil war in Sudan, or widespread malnutrition, while gaining insight from MSF’s operations across the globe.
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