Opportunities for Research Partnerships

We welcome researchers — from Monash and from institutions worldwide, and across every discipline — who want to collaborate with SEACO for new research. Whether you bring your own funding or are still developing a proposal, we can help you design studies that draw on SEACO's field infrastructure and trusted community relationships.

Equitable partnerships. We hold ourselves — and the partners we work with — to the principles of equitable research partnership. Global health research can either challenge or entrench imbalances of power in how agendas are set, funding is allocated, data are accessed, authorship is assigned and capacity is built (Nambiar, Chadha & Buse, 2025). As a community-embedded platform based where the research actually happens, SEACO works to a different model:

  • Partnerships with clear, agreed roles, responsibilities and benefits for everyone involved
  • Shared ownership of research priorities and design rather than extractive, one-way collaboration
  • Fair acknowledgement and authorship
  • Genuine two-way capacity strengthening
  • Equitable access to data, resources and the credit that flows from them

We expect prospective partners to share this commitment, and we weigh it in how we assess and shape every collaboration and partnership.

How to start

Interested researchers are encouraged to contact SEACO early to discuss their research ideas and explore opportunities for collaboration. Following these discussions, researchers may be invited to submit a proposal describing the proposed research and resource requirements to assess its feasibility and alignment with SEACO's research priorities.

What we look for

We welcome proposals that address important research questions, demonstrate scientific rigour, and make appropriate use of the SEACO platform. We also consider the potential benefit to the community, alignment with SEACO's priorities, and opportunities for meaningful collaboration and capacity strengthening.

Costing

Research projects should be appropriately resourced to support the use of SEACO's available infrastructure and services. Cost requirements will vary depending on the scope of the project, including data access, analysis support and/or primary data collection, and will be discussed during proposal development.

Proposal assessment

Proposals are assessed against SEACO's collaboration criteria, including scientific quality, potential community benefit, alignment with SEACO's strategic priorities, feasibility, sustainability and opportunities for capacity strengthening.

Ethics and approvals

Approved projects must obtain the necessary ethics approvals and institutional approvals before any research activities commence.