The BRIDGES collaboration began in 2014 and funding was initially secured in 2015. This initial funding was kindly provided by Kyoto University and the University of Bristol. Professor Kodama secured the Kyoto award; Professor Huxtable secured an International Strategic Fund award from Bristol, on which he worked with Professor Kodama. This funding helped to support initial Bristol-Kyoto visits and workshops. These events identified two areas for further exploration: end-of-life care, and research integrity.
Professor Lee attended these early events. He then undertook a Visiting Fellowship at the Centre for Ethics in Medicine in the University of Bristol for 18 months, as did one of the Yonsei PhD researchers, Seung Jeung Gyeong, who visited for 6 months. In 2017, Professor Lee worked with Professors Ives and Huxtable to secure funding from the Korean Global Research Network for “GRN:BRIDGES”. This funding supported workshops in Bristol and Yonsei, in which the teams from Bristol, Kyoto and Yonsei participated. These workshops enabled colleagues to share their research approaches and to identify the four topics that BRIDGES:BKY is exploring.
Although there are distinct approaches and issues arising in the three countries, the BRIDGES team also appreciates that there are many shared challenges – and opportunities – arising in bioethics. Further collaboration should hopefully help the team (and others) to learn from one another in seeking to address the challenges. Early career researchers have played a significant role in all of our BRIDGES collaborations to date. For these reasons, BRIDGES:BKY extends our ongoing collaboration, with a particular focus on supporting early career researchers in bioethics, particularly in the UK, Japan and South Korea.
