Episode 10: Buck Rogers Goes to Uni

The latest episode of My Imaginary University draws on the creative capabilities of Professor Emma Flynn, outgoing Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Research and Enterprise at Queen's University Belfast and shortly to start as Provost at the University of Warwick.

Emma offers us the most remarkable and fantastical institution - a World University which seeks to recognise the huge power of institutions across the globe to understand and change the world and lives. This university aims to convene the best people from all parts of the world to collaborate instead of competing to come up with solutions to the big global challenges.

The university's HQ and principal campus can be found sitting above all national and cultural boundaries: in a very large space station. It is staffed by both permanent staff and visiting or seconded academics and business leaders and Emma believes that its global collaborative approach will be a real catalyst for success.

With a curriculum focused on the UN Sustainable Development Goals and a global research collaborative programme and student mobility scheme it will be overseen by a Nobel Peace Prize winning Chancellor with some astronaut back up.

All in all it is a remarkably out there proposition, which can't fail to take off. And with a genuinely international global anthem from a surprising source it is sure to succeed in this century as well as in the 25th with Buck Rogers.