In September 2014, thirty-five Southampton students and four academic staff visited Lund University to work with students, academics, practitioners and users of healthcare services. The visit was the first event in a project lasting for the academic year 2014/5, which includes further individual and cohort exchanges, networking activities and ongoing joint projects.

The research project presented here looks into a specific component of this year long exchange initiative. Working in close collaboration with student co-researchers, we seek to explore whether and how international partnerships in healthcare influence Occupational Therapy students’ knowledge and identity as global healthcare citizens, and in broader terms, whether their sense of intercultural capability (following Nussbaum’s [2000: 230] definition) is being developed through this aspect of their professional education.

One of three projects in the UK to win funding of 20k through a highly competitive call for education research*, the success of this project was down to its ability to engage students as partners in all aspects of the research, in ways likely to generate new knowledge and insight into pedagogies of partnership and global health education.

Following the work of Fielding (2001), who located students as radical agents of change, and Neary’s (2012) transformative ‘student as producer’ movement, our research proposal to the Higher Education Academy (HEA) described a co-researching, co-designing research methodology with students. The partnership goal will move us beyond the more traditional aspirations to respect students’ knowledge and give voice to their experiences, towards more genuine collaboration and co-production.

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*The Higher Education Academy (HEA), the UK’s national body for enhancing learning and teaching in Higher Education (HE), is funding the study in line with their goal to promote excellent learning and teaching in Higher Education Institutions. The original call for projects on Pedagogies of Partnership can be found here.