Tom Birtwistle, Director, North India, the British Council visits Panjab University

Chandigarh, July 23, 2019: Tom Birtwistle, Director, North India, the British Council visited Panjab University, here today. The meeting which was chaired by Prof.Shankarji Jha, Dean, University Instruction and officiating Vice Chancellor, Panjab University, centered on ‘Going Global’, which was the theme of the British Council stakeholder conference organized at Berlin in May 2019. Prof.Jha stressed on collaborations in all fields of Sanskrit including linguistics. In his previous posting at South Africa and Namibia, Tom had established Digify Bytes, a project which helped more than 70,000 African youth become employment-ready. Tom explained the goals of the British Council for the coming years and stressed that global mobility forms the corner stone of future plan and policy. The group was in agreement over the importance of faculty and student exchange programs along with multi-disciplinary collaboration. Tom shared the information that 15 Vice Chancellors from the UK would soon be visiting India to explore collaboration with Indian Universities. A galaxy of professors across disciplines participated in the meeting. The members were in agreement that youngsters need to be prepared for the demands of professional life and the UK and India can collaborate to impart language proficiency, hard skills and life skills. The members collaborated over further exploration and collaboration in the area of waste management, smart cities, bioinformatics, cancer research and sectoral business management programmes.