When war breaks out, the instinct is to protect what is immediately visible: people, buildings, energy grids, borders. Research rarely features in emergency plans. It can appear secondary – something to stabilise later, once the urgent has passed.
Ukrainian universities have operated under sustained disruption – damaged campuses, displaced academics, interrupted laboratories, fractured research teams, daily air-raid alerts and energy blackouts. And yet, they have not retreated from international collaboration. They have intensified it. If universities are engines of long-term societal capacity, then weakening research during conflict compounds the damage long after fighting stops. Sustaining research excellence under crisis conditions is not a luxury. It is part of the infrastructure of resilience.
The story of UK-Ukraine higher education cooperation over these past four years is not simply one of solidarity. It is a story about structure, and about what happens when solidarity is organised, moderated and sustained over time. Much of this cooperation began through early institutional pairings between UK and Ukrainian universities under the Twinning Initiative, driven forward by Cormack Consultancy Group. Those initial connections – pragmatic, rapidly assembled, often crisis-driven – created channels of trust and communication. But what has defined the past four years is not the announcements. It is the sustained, hands-on work that followed. That sustained moderation laid the groundwork for deeper research collaboration.
From solidarity to structure
In the early months of the invasion, UK universities mobilised quickly; partnerships were announced; emergency support was provided; equipment was delivered; and access was offered. Among international partners, the UK has been one of the most organised and strategically engaged supporters of Ukrainian higher education. UK institutions did not stop at symbolic affiliation – they embedded Twinning partnerships into active research engagement, hosted structured matchmaking, mobilised funding expertise and maintained contact over time. That organisation matters as emergency solidarity can be rapid, but structural integration takes persistence.
Over four years, these moderated institutional relationships evolved into more focused projects under the umbrella of Twinning: structured support for competitive research collaboration. Two recent initiatives illustrate this trajectory – the Twinning Seed Fund for Research Excellence and the UK-Ukraine Horizon Europe Support Initiative. They did not emerge in isolation. They were products of four years of accumulated networks, working relationships and shared practice.
The Twinning Seed Fund was designed to provide small-scale catalytic funding to initiate or strengthen UK-Ukraine research partnerships, with a clear pathway toward participation in major European funding frameworks such as Horizon Europe. The response revealed the scale of academic mobilisation under war conditions.
The first application round received 234 applications, requesting £6.7 million against a much smaller available budget. Ukrainian institutions participated 288 times across proposals. Seventy-one unique UK universities engaged. Partnerships extended beyond bilateral collaboration, involving institutions from 29 countries outside Ukraine. These figures matter not as promotional statistics, but as indicators of intent.
Four years into war, Ukrainian universities were not retreating into academic survival mode. They were actively seeking structured international research integration. But seed funding is, by design, limited. It supports early workshops, mobility, mentoring, joint publications and it builds conceptual alignment and trust. It does not, on its own, convert partnerships into multi-million-pound European consortia – and that exposed a structural gap.
The myth of networking as enough
Higher education often assumes that if researchers are introduced to one another, collaboration will naturally follow – organise a workshop; create a contact list; sign an agreement. In stable systems, that sometimes works, but in fragile systems, it rarely does. This became clear through the pilot phase of the UK-Ukraine Horizon Europe Support Initiative – a structured intervention focused not on connection alone, but on conversion around how to translate research ideas into competitive Horizon Europe proposals.
Over 450 Ukrainian researchers and more than 230 UK researchers engaged in the programme. Ukrainian participants submitted 385 Horizon-aligned concept notes. Nearly 300 structured introductions were facilitated. More than 180 moderated partnership calls were delivered. Consortia began forming within months, and joint proposals were submitted early in the cycle. The critical difference was not enthusiasm, it was facilitation. Researchers were not simply connected and left alone. They were supported through call interpretation, impact alignment, consortium architecture, budget structuring, role clarification and submission readiness.
Horizon Europe is not a simple funding pot. It is a policy-driven framework requiring alignment with societal missions, balanced consortia, governance clarity and precise impact articulation. For researchers operating under air-raid interruptions and institutional strain, navigating that system without structured support is unrealistic. At the same time, UK researchers – though strongly motivated to collaborate – face their own pressures: workload intensity, reduced internal bid development capacity, and financial uncertainty within their institutions. In both systems, time and coordination matter.
Four years of experience point to an uncomfortable conclusion: excellence does not self-organise under pressure. Introductions are necessary, but insufficient, as without sustained mediation, early momentum dissipates and partnerships stall before submission. The intermediary layer – often invisible in policy discourse – is not administrative excess, it is delivery infrastructure.
The human face behind the metrics
Behind every “concept note screened” is a research team trying to protect continuity. For Ukrainian academics, participation in European research frameworks is not just about funding, it is about institutional visibility, intellectual belonging and strategic positioning within the European Research Area. It signals to early-career researchers that there is a future in academia at home and it anchors departments that might otherwise fragment.
Four years into war, research participation is an act of resilience, but this is not a one-sided narrative. For UK higher education, these partnerships also deliver tangible value. They deepen internationalisation beyond recruitment metrics; they reconnect UK researchers substantively with European consortia; they embed UK teams within Horizon Europe pipelines; they bring external research funding into UK institutions; they strengthen science diplomacy credibility; and they immerse international teams in sustained joint problem-solving.
In a post-Brexit environment where rebuilding structured European research engagement has required careful diplomacy and persistence, UK-Ukraine collaboration has provided a practical and policy-aligned route back into active continental networks. These collaborations are reciprocal. Ukrainian researchers bring strong disciplinary expertise – from AI and cybersecurity to materials science, environmental resilience, public health and governance reform. This is not symbolic inclusion, it is substantive intellectual partnership. Four years on, the narrative is not about charity, it is about shared excellence under strain.
The funding dilemma
Initial crisis responses are often swift and generous, but over time, other priorities emerge. Funding pressures intensify, and attention fragments. The UK higher education system itself is operating under strain – recruitment volatility, cross-subsidy pressures and constrained public R&D budgets – and in such an environment, sustained international engagement must justify itself strategically.
Under Horizon Europe, collaborative research projects typically unlock between £3 million and £5 million per consortium. A structured acceleration model supporting 20–30 large-scale submissions – even assuming a conservative success rate – can generate £13-23 million in external funding from investment below £1 million. Modest coordination investment can leverage significantly larger European research flows, but the deeper risk is not financial inefficiency, it is momentum loss.
Four years of relationship-building have created trust, working rhythms and research pipelines. Without sustained support, partnerships formed under extraordinary circumstances risk dissipating and researchers revert to domestic pressures. The narrative shifts from “long-term integration” to “short-term gesture” – fragile systems are particularly vulnerable to stop-start engagement, but consistency is stability. If long-term UK-Ukraine research cooperation is viewed as strategic, not merely symbolic, then facilitation is not an optional extra. It is the mechanism through which early investment converts into measurable impact.
Staying in the room
Perhaps the clearest lesson from four years of collaboration is simple but demanding: someone must stay in the room. Someone must translate complex calls into accessible briefs, moderate early conversations, follow up when energy dips, clarify roles within consortia, review draft impact sections, keep timelines visible despite disruption, and bridge policy logic and scientific ambition.
That connective work is rarely visible in headline announcements, but without it, partnership remains aspiration. Four years on, Ukrainian and UK researchers have demonstrated that excellence does not disappear under pressure – it adapts, persists, and seeks connection. The question is not whether collaboration is possible, it is whether we sustain the structures that allow it to mature. That’s because in wartime, and in the uncertain period that follows, research is not something rebuilt once stability returns – it is one of the ways stability is built in the first place.