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© Proceedings of the Ruhuna Quality Assurance Sessions 2021 (RUQAS 2021)
st
21 September 2021

Keywords: Quality Assurance, International Research Collaborations, Covid-19, Online Events

Introduction

The Covid-19 pandemic affected every sphere of human society with unprecedented impacts. Even at

the moment, morbidity and mortality of the pandemic are increasing without a clear sign of a decline.
Besides health and economic sectors, the scientific community has been vastly affected by the negative

impacts of the pandemic due to the closure of universities and research centres and containment
measures such as travel restrictions. Most of the scientific events including international conferences,

training programs, and workshops were cancelled or postponed with restricted international travel

affecting international research collaborations in particular (Subramanya et al., 2020). The Covid-19
pandemic and subsequent travel restrictions affected field research work followed by travel for

meetings and funding mostly (Ramvilas et al., 2021). Such implications have highlighted the dire need
for identifying the exact impacts of the Covid-19 on these collaborative research projects and

implementing necessary mitigation measures.

The BRITAE (Building Resilience in Tropical Agro-Ecosystems) project funded by the EU Erasmus+
grant scheme connects research communities of 9 universities from 4 countries [Sri Lanka (the

University of Ruhuna, University of Colombo, University of Moratuwa, University of Sri

Jayewardenepura, Sabaragamuwa University of Sri Lanka), United Kingdom (the University of
Huddersfield, University of Central Lancashire), Estonia (Tallinn University of Technology), and

Lithuania (Vilnius Gediminas Technical University)] intending to develop curricula modules on

building resilience in the tropical Agro-ecosystem in Sri Lankan universities to increase their capacity
to continually modernize, enhance the quality and relevance of education of students to the global

market needs and to ensure international cooperation in line with needs for solutions relevant to food
security and climate change (BRITAE, 2020). This 3-year project with seven work packages was

kicked off in February 2020 and progressed amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. Like various other
collaborative research projects worldwide, BRITAE also has been experiencing challenges induced by

the pandemic such as travel restrictions, bans on gatherings, etc. The annual progress monitoring

process was carried out in March 2021 with the aim of systematic and monitoring quality assurance of
the overall project. Based on findings from the progress monitoring, this paper aims at outlining the

level of impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic on the overall project progress and what areas need
improvements in order to incorporate conditions created by the pandemic.

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