If you want a durable link with a research community in Vietnam, co-hosting a small workshop there does more than several years of conference encounters — and it usually costs less than sending your own team to an international meeting.
What it buys that travel does not
Your partner's whole group participates, including students who will never have travel funding. Those are the people who will be your collaborators in ten years.
You meet researchers who do not travel internationally — which is precisely where unused collaboration capacity sits.
And your partner is the host, which changes their standing in their own institution in ways that matter for their career and for the partnership's durability.
Keep it small
Twenty to thirty people over two days beats a two-hundred-person conference for this purpose. At that size people actually talk to each other; above it, most attendees listen.
Small also means your partner can organise it without a dedicated events office, and the budget stays within reach of a networking grant.
Divide the work honestly
The default division: your partner handles venue, logistics, and the considerable administrative work of hosting international visitors; you bring participants from your network and usually cover their travel.
Two things to get right about this.
Local organising is real work. Permissions, venue, catering, visa support letters, transport — it absorbs weeks of someone's time. Budget it as staff time rather than assuming it comes free with the hosting.
Do not let your side design the programme. A workshop held in Vietnam where foreign visitors give most of the talks is a conference that happens to be in Vietnam. Agree jointly on the theme, and aim for at least half the speaking time going to researchers based there — including students.
If that feels like it lowers the programme's quality, that judgement is worth examining. It is usually a judgement about presentation style and English fluency rather than about research substance.
Funding
Networking and seed grants are the natural fit — most funders have a category for this, and it is considerably easier to win than a research grant.
Combine it with your institution's international office funds and your partner's activity budget. For a workshop this size, one networking grant usually covers most of it.
If you charge a registration fee, keep it low or waive it for students and for participants from less-resourced institutions. A fee that excludes the people you most want in the room defeats the purpose.
Programme design
A narrow theme. "Research collaboration" gives nobody anything to say. A specific open question in the field makes the talks connect.
Discussion time, not just talks. Ten minutes of questions per twenty-minute talk, and an open session at the end of each day.
A student session. Short talks or posters from doctoral and master's students. This is the part with the longest-lasting effect, and it is the part most easily cut when the programme gets crowded.
Unstructured time. Meals, breaks, an afternoon visit somewhere. Collaborations form here, not in the sessions.
Practical matters for visitors
Ask your partner about timing before fixing dates: Lunar New Year, examination periods, and rainy season all reshape what is feasible.
Send visa support requirements early — your partner needs lead time to produce invitation letters, and some visitors will need longer than they expect.
And brief your own participants: this is a workshop where local colleagues present as equals, they should attend the student session, and English-as-a-second-language delivery is not a proxy for research quality.
Streaming
Streaming the main sessions costs almost nothing and reaches people who cannot attend. Worth doing.
But do not make it fully online if the goal is a network. The valuable part — the conversations outside the programme — does not happen through a screen.
Follow-through
Plan this before the workshop, not after.
Reserve the final session for concrete next steps: which joint projects, who does what, which funding call both sides could target.
Send a summary to all participants within two weeks, listing what was agreed and who owns each item.
And make sure your partner keeps the participant list with contact details. It is their asset, usable for years — and the group that hosted should be the group that holds it.
If you have not done this before
Start smaller: a half-day seminar while you are in Vietnam for something else. It costs almost nothing, gives your partner organising experience, and tells you whether a larger workshop is worth planning.
Two or three of those and a two-day workshop stops being a large undertaking for either side.
Why co-host rather than fund travel?
The partner's whole group participates including students, you reach researchers who do not travel internationally, and the partner gains standing as host.
What size works best?
Twenty to thirty people over two days — large enough for range, small enough that people actually talk to each other.
How should the programme be balanced?
At least half the speaking time to researchers based in Vietnam, including students. A workshop where visitors give most of the talks is a conference that happens to be there.
What is often forgotten in the budget?
Local organising as staff time — permissions, venue, visa letters and transport absorb weeks of someone's work.
