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Emma Stokes Trinity Today chats with Professor Emma Stokes, the newly appointed Vice President for Global Engagement about her plans for Trinity in the wider global community Congratulations on your recent appointment as Vice President for Global Engagement. What does your new role involve? What does being a globally connected community mean to Trinity? Thank you. My role involves working with the Trinity Global team and all our stakeholders to ensure we achieve what we want to achieve as part of Trinity’s global engagement. As we emerge from a global pandemic and begin the new Provost’s term and the second decade of the work of Trinity Global, we are embarking on a project called ‘Reimagining Global’. Part of the process is asking members of the Trinity community what being a globally engaged community actually means. The pandemic impacted global student mobility. Can we expect more volatility over the next few years? What is some of our learning from lockdowns and the switch to online education in terms of global engagement and how can we apply it? Global mobility of everyone was impacted for the past 2 years. There is always the potential for regional volatility, but I’d be hopeful that we won’t have such a global impact. As a leading physiotherapist and President of World Physiotherapy – how does this inform your approach to global engagement? I have served as President for 7 years now. World Physiotherapy is an organisation with 125 member organisations from all over the world. We work with organisations in high resource countries as well as resource limited countries, from many different cultures. We strive to be a global community where every physiotherapist feels connected and engaged. Trinity has just been named as one of the Top 20 International Universities by the Times Higher Education – what are your plans for developing this excellent ranking further? I think we should be excellent in all that we do. But to answer your question, the metrics that inform this aspect of the ranking are as follows: Proportion of international students Proportion of international staff What do you think the global campus of the future might look like? A combination of many dimensions – a mix of face to face and virtual interaction, more trans-national alliances to develop universities such as the European University alliance that Trinity is part of in CHARM-EU, a more portfolio based approach to participation in teaching and learning, using micro-credentials to allow students learn in different ways and over different timelines and across campuses. In recent interviews with alumni, the question of types of leadership has arisen. What is your leadership style and how will you approach leading your team at Trinity Global? I hope I am inclusive as a leader. I try to develop capacity in the teams and organisations in which I work. I try to be responsible, courageous and imaginative. I am passionate about Trinity and Trinity Global and that gives me energy and drive. I am committed to equity, diversity and ensuring that the people in my community are respected, supported and feel that they belong, and lastly that they are inspired to be the best versions of themselves.
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Thinking Global Trinity Global is the gateway between Trinity and our global community of students, institutional partners and academic collaborators. They are committed to strengthening Trinity’s global profile through student recruitment, supporting academic and student mobility, building strategic partnerships and encouraging engagement worldwide . Click the flags to see the partners that make up Trinity’s global community
