NSU and BIISS Sign MoU to Boost Policy Research. North South University (NSU) and the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS) have signed a Memorandum of Understanding aimed at deepening cooperation in research and policy work. The signing took place at the Vice-Chancellor’s Conference Room on NSU’s campus, where senior officials from both sides met to outline shared priorities and discuss what the partnership could look like in practice.
The agreement lays out a fairly broad scope of cooperation, covering joint research, policy-focused studies, seminars, conferences, academic exchange, and joint publications. Much of the day-to-day work under the MoU will run through the South Asian Institute of Policy and Governance (SIPG), the NSU body that will effectively serve as the operational hub for the partnership.
For scholars and students on both sides, the collaboration is meant to open up new avenues for research and dialogue on questions that carry weight well beyond campus walls issues of national, regional, and global significance. There’s also an underlying goal of narrowing the gap between academic research and actual policy practice, so that scholarly work translates more directly into perspectives that inform real governance and strategic decisions.
Officials from both institutions framed the signing as a reflection of their shared interest in evidence-based research and sustained intellectual exchange, rather than a one-time formality. The idea, essentially, is to pool NSU’s academic expertise with BIISS’s policy grounding to produce research that carries more weight in public discourse.
NSU’s Office of External Affairs (OEA), which helped coordinate the agreement, called it part of the university’s ongoing push to build partnerships with established research and policy institutions in Bangladesh. Looking forward, the university said it hopes to work with BIISS through SIPG on joint initiatives that strengthen research output, policy engagement, and strategic dialogue — both within Bangladesh and in the wider regional context.