A very successful trip to Bejijing, China was made by NBS staff in September.
Three staff members, Prof Richard Sanders from the China Centre, tim Curtis, the Social Enterprise specialist and He Shaowei, also from the China Centre travelled to Bejing with sponsorship by the British Council PMI2 programme and attended a conference hosted by the Capital University of Economics and Business (CUEB).

The International Symposium of Social Enterprise and Self-employment was attended by University of Northampton faculty as well as the Ministries of Civil Affairs and Human Resources and the Beijing based Youcheng Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.

Professor Sanders provided a keynote speech and Mr Curtis presented his own paper on the infrastructure required to educate more social entrepreneurs and also a paper by Wray Irwin of the University of Northampton about grounded breaking field research into the motivations of social entrepreneurs.
Mr Curtis then hosted a masterclass with three Chinese social entrepreneurs for posgraduate students of CUEB.  A visit programme had also been organised to meet with emerging social enterprises in China and to exchange case-study material.

This has already been incorporated into a case-study for first year undergradate social enterprise students in the UK. Discussions about longer term collaboration via virtual learning environments were progressed and the Uk team developed a very important insight into the history of 'danwei' work units in Chinese history and the future of social enterprise. This will be the subject of ongoing research and academic journal papers.