Uppsala University, Sweden and CIRCUS (Centre for Integrated Research on Culture and Society)

TORCH has collaborated with Uppsala University in Sweden for many years exploring how to facilitate and support high-quality interdisciplinary research and meaningful research engagement. On a similar model to TORCH and other interdisciplinary research centres, Uppsala University set up CIRCUS, which is a platform for interdisciplinary culture and society research.

This partnership connects as part of the international strategy for Humanities research engagement at Oxford and enables these Universities to share best practice and learn together on future innovations. It connects researchers and staff at both Universities, including the business collaboration team at Uppsala and CIRCUS. TORCH and Uppsala will facilitate collaborative research projects and researcher exchange in the creative industries.

TORCH, CIRCUS and Uppsala University have focused on knowledge exchange research collaborations with creative industry organisations. The research collaboration teams at Uppsala have created the Uppsala co-creation community for culture and creativity platform as part of EIT (European Institute of Innovation and Technology) Culture and Creativity, which is a so-called KIC (Knowledge and Innovation Community).

A KIC aims to speed up an industry by financing various types of knowledge-intensive and innovative collaborative projects. Uppsala University is one of the leading partners in the collaboration and around fifty European actors from academia, civil society and companies are involved in the collaboration.