Hi Franco and colleagues I will be discussingthis with members of the Southampton research office shortly - basically they have asked me - as the only person not on leave - to draft an expression of interest. This will have to be quite open: we must involve other interest groups in the university; and there may be constraints on links with other UK institutions On the positive side, we are near fixing a public debate between Lawrence Lessig and Ian Hargreaves, the author of the Digital Britain report that started al this Here are Diana Galpin's notes; followed by her response to my suggestion that Volker might be the director. I need to know the legal standing of P2P (registered charoty / trust / not-for-profit / country/ies of incirporation etc for these pruposes; also Volker I am presuming you are freelance for these purposes: can you send me a CV I have a skype conference with the admin team this morning at 11.30/12 BST Sean Wednesday, 17 August 2011 14:06 Sounds a good result. We do need to be careful about what and how much we expect P2P to do as from the looks of things they are an international organisation. Now that is fine but we may not be able to flow grant monies to them.. Niki P checked with AHRC and their response was that an international company could participate in Œmutually beneficial¹ hub based activities that were badged under the heading of Œinternational cooperation¹ and paid for using the grant. The reciprocity would arise from the fact the company might be making a contribution to the project (indirectly) through their participation and bringing new knowledge/expertise into the arena. However, it would not be possible to pay an international company for other goods and services or enter into a contracting/sub-contracting relationship on a one-to-one basis using AHRC grant monies. Of course that was with respect to them being a companyŠ are they? Before we can get definitive advice from AHRC can you confirm what type of organisation they are and in what capacity you would expect them to be involved? If you are going ahead with a telecom probably worth including Nikki Matthews as she probably has most capacity to provide the RIS support to you at the moment. Kind Regards Diana Diana Galpin Senior Legal Adviser Research & Innovation Services Direct Tel: 023 8059 8673 Mobile: 07979852362 Fax: 023 8059 8671 www.southampton.ac.uk/business Wednesday, 17 August 2011 14:49 Sean Careful on the automatic ³employ Volker as a director² front being your easy fix as any role would need to be advertised externally following usual University of Southampton HR and recruitment policiesŠ I am also not entirely sure whether due to limitations on our insurance, health & safety risks & complexities of then having to adopt local employment laws etc that we would employ someone to be permanently based overseas Sorry not trying to put barriers in the way but help guide you to what is possible/not! KR DIana