Signature Research Program
Overview
The Signature Research Program (SRP) is a new platform launched by the Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) aimed at promoting innovative and impactful research through cross-entity interdisciplinary collaboration within HBKU and beyond.
Through a shared vision, objectives, framework and resources (see diagram below), the program aims to develop an ongoing set of well-integrated research clusters that will carve out distinctive research areas for HBKU in the region and internationally, and to make HBKU a hub to attract and develop talent.
Research Focus
- Establish research excellence in niche areas
- Integrate a set of interdisciplinary projects with shared focus and objectives
- Build competitiveness in research
Collaboration
- Build networks within and outside HBKU focused on specific research
- Attract local and international collaborators
Resource Planning and Optimization
- Better resource allocation based on priorities and research quality
- Concentration of resources
- Resource sharing
- Create a sustainable funding model to support priority research
Capacity Building
- Build competitive research capacity in focused areas
- Attract and develop talent
- Enhance HBKU’s reputation
Cycle 1 Overview
It is in our core mission to support Qatar’s society to prosper and strengthen its cultural roots and identity. As the world continues to change at an accelerating rate, social progress is increasingly essential to protect our heritage, culture, community, and the future of our children.
Our research focus in social progress cuts across five key areas:
- Arabic Language, Culture and Heritage
- Social Responsibility
- Social Inclusion
- Ethics and Policy
- Family Cohesion
Cycle 1 of the Signature Research Program brings together expertise and knowledge from four HBKU colleges: College of Humanities and Social Sciences, College of Public Policy, College of Law and College of Islamic Studies. HBKU collaborates with many local and international institutes and organizations to tackle pressing issues that cut across priority areas under social progress.
SRP Cluster 1
Managing Social Transformation in Qatar: Risks, Trends and Future Trajectories
The aim is to produce strategic insights that contribute to an understanding of the forces and trends shaping the future trajectories of Qatari society across socio-cultural and socio-economic domains.
The SRP Cluster 1 will examine four key strategic areas:
- Higher Education: Participation, skills and training, quality, and international competitiveness
- Public Health & Technology: Capacity, service delivery, gaps, and inefficiencies
- Culture and transformation: Identity, language, and cultural ‘stresses’
- Social welfare and protection: Social inclusion, elderly, housing, disability
Major outputs include the identification of:
- Sectoral trends, highlighting emerging key threats and potential fissure points
- Policy pathways, strategic choices, and decision points
- Potential ‘shocks’ and impact assessment
- Legal and governance gaps, including regulatory and policy gaps
Team members
SRP Cluster 2
Explorations in Developing an HBKU Index of Social Cohesion
The International Social Cohesiveness Index falls short of accounting for different contexts and variables. This research cluster, therefore, aims at developing an HBKU Index of an interdisciplinary construct that can fill in the gaps and provide an index of this multifaceted construct that could be used in Qatar and the region.
The SRP Cluster 2 covers three domains:
- The economic domain: Exclusion, equality, and inequality
- The political domain: Legitimacy/illegitimacy via trust in institutions, participation/passivity via social capital or political participation
- The sociocultural domain: Acceptance/rejection via solidarity as well as affiliation/isolate via socio cultural participation
Major outputs would include:
- Review paper on social cohesion: An Islamic perspective
- Social Media Dataset annotated for misinformation, polarization, and propaganda
- HBKU-Social Cohesion Index Report
Team members
- Resources
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