QS: Looking over the stats so far for Australia as an associate member: it participated in 239 projects, and roughly one in four projects is selected. Australia’s neighbour, New Zealand, achieved Pillar II status about three years ago in 2023, and you were working there for the past four years. What has it done well and why are its researchers performing so strongly?

TS: Researchers in New Zealand are actually able to be directly supported through the grants. While the number of Australians who have participated in Europe might seem large, the return on investment has been very, very low because of our partner status.

New Zealand has had remarkable success in Horizon given its size, and there are a number of reasons for that. I think fundamentally, one of the key things is that New Zealand has continued to look towards the UK over the last several decades, and by association, Europe, whereas Australia over the last few decades has perhaps shifted its attention to Asia and North America. That's one of the advantages that New Zealanders had in participating in Horizon.

The way that the Horizon scheme was set up in New Zealand has also worked very well. They are in Pillar II, and there are six clusters within it. In New Zealand, there are national contact points for each of those clusters. The key thing with the national contact points is that they're not bureaucrats; they're researchers selected from universities. So, they have someone who's an active researcher; who understands the research landscape, understands motivations, preferences and capacities; and is able to get a broader mainstreaming of the benefits and advantages of Horizon as well as the mechanisms for effectively engaging.

That's really been a game-changer for the New Zealand context. Their system of the national contact points being derived from within research institutions and scattered among the country as well, among different types of research and higher education institutions, has worked particularly well.

QS: You touched on the geographic distribution. New Zealand’s university system is a diverse mix of regional and metropolitan, and is substantially more regional when compared to Australia. In Australia, there is also the challenge that the East Coast metropolitan areas of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane receive the majority of international students -- and to a lesser degree, the West Coast in Perth -- but the focus remains coastal and metropolitan.

The Regional Universities Network has actively petitioned to improve research funding, as well as incentives and inducements for international students. What is the risk if the funding and the work that Australia does are focussed on the metropolitan area, rather than taking it into the more regional areas with Horizon?

TS: You've touched on a whole range of things around international education, historical biases towards larger institutions, and so on that affect a whole range of other things in relation to just the capacity to be able to invest in research. But I think one of the things that's critical to understand is that we need to think about what the motivations are for Europe to want to partner with Australia.

If we look at the New Zealand example, the sorts of projects that were funded were around areas where New Zealand had a competitive advantage: agriculture, environment, cultural integration, and so on. I think that we would be naive to think that our competitive advantage to Europe is tied up in our urban areas.

I'm not saying that there isn't a competitive advantage there, but certainly I see our competitive advantage being primarily located within our regions. Our agricultural advances, protection of the environment and so on. Those things are completely within the wheelhouse of regional universities.

QS: What should universities do now to develop the European Relationships Consortium bid capability ahead of 2027 program calls?

TS: It's about looking strategically at what Europe will value in terms of a partnership with Australia and not being naive in terms of what we think we could offer. Understanding what their motivations and preferences are, not only from a thematic perspective, but also from a geographic perspective. For instance, Australia could potentially position itself as a gateway to the Pacific for Europe. We need to be thinking quite broadly about what would be valued by Australia participating in a Horizon project.

QS: What are some of those thematics that are interesting to Europeans at the moment?

TS: I'm just comparing it to the New Zealand experience, and so, as I mentioned before, agriculture, environment. Obviously, in New Zealand, there's a big emphasis on cultural dimensions around Mātauranga Māori, Māori Indigenous knowledge, and so on. I think there are certainly advantages that we would have that would mirror the New Zealand context.

There are other areas, as you mentioned, in the urban areas where we would have some competitive advantage as well. But I think there's a range of challenges around how we adapt to climate change. In the past, I've been involved in projects in Europe, and the key motivation for partnering with Australia was looking at how we're responding to extreme events, because they're likely to become more intense and frequent in the European context.

QS: Climate is particularly relevant given the heat waves and fires we’ve seen in Europe over their summer.

TS: Exactly right, and there's a huge array of current projects that we're working on at the moment that are directly relevant in terms of their approach to the European context. For instance, at Southern Cross, we've just launched a new Australian coffee research programme, which is looking at different sorts of coffee varieties under different sorts of climatic regimes in different parts of the country.

Something like that, where we're looking at transitioning to a different sort of agricultural product to deal with different sorts of climatic regimes, is of direct benefit to the European context, and where we do have a competitive advantage. Those sorts of initiatives are of direct relevance, and that's exactly what I'm talking about: being strategic. Where we do have competitive advantages, where we can add value to both Europe and back home.

QS: Quite often, there is short-term thinking of, for example, this partnership or entering into Horizon is just a source of grant funding. How do you move into a long-term position of research and innovation partnership. one that can last for decades?

TS: The beauty of the Horizon scheme is that the projects are reasonably long; you know, you can develop long-term partnerships through the programs. As well as that, I think it provides an opportunity to look at scaffolding partnerships with other dimensions, for instance, with joint high degree programmes and other sorts of mobility, staff and student mobility arrangements. It's a real opportunity to really look at scaffolding around projects with broader sector imperatives.

QS: Once everything is in place, what does good participation look like? What does excellent participation look like? And what does poor participation look like?

TS: I think it's easy to answer the poor participation. As you said before, the poor participation is really seeing Horizon as just another grant scheme, right?

Examples of good participation are actually involved in things where we've got a competitive advantage but can leverage value-add for Australia as well -- where we can develop those deep, long-lasting partnerships through student and staff mobility, through things like joint PhD arrangements, and through scaffolding these grants with a whole range of other things that are key strategic imperatives to the sector. A good outcome would be a better economy, better communities, better environments.