Building on the sociology of international research partnerships (Zingerli 2010) this paper focuses on research collaborations in the early era of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, particularly taking into account the Sustainable Development Goal 17 on global partnership for sustainable development. Adopting a funders' perspective, it puts forward three questions: 1) What are the implications of institutional, historical and social circumstances for research partnerships to emerge in the 21st century? 2) How do structural and institutional conditions shape research collaborations, and 3) what are the prospects and impacts of increasingly globalised research encounters?

This paper draws on conceptual considerations and practical experiences at the interface of science and development policy.

Besides university and research institutes, journals and books, publishing houses and repositories, museums are important engines of research and knowledge production, all above scientific and university museums. How is the potential of the African "museum-scape" and of transcontinental networks to be assessed in this respect? To what extent can they contribute to making research from Africa more visible and accessible? This paper intends to present a current trilateral museum research partnership between Africa and Europe and to analyse the actual and potential contributions in research from the African side as well as the premises, conditions and modalities of its engagement with other involved partner institutions. It highlights amongst other the findings of an international conference on museum cooperation between Africa and Europe held in December 2016 (www.musethno.uzh.ch/en/conference2016), elaborating on knowledge production and dissemination as well as on the (pre-) conditions and requirements of larger long-term partnerships. Which research forms, outcomes and outputs are conceivable? How about publications, exhibitions, databases, digital copies, websites, staff exchange and tandems? What goes along with collaborations and "knowledge partnerships" with institutions in the North?

Research partnerships between North and South have received new attention with the emergence of paradigms such as the knowledge societies or research for development. Large sums have supported collaborative research between mostly unequal partners.

This paper develops a story by drawing from different experiences to define equal and fair research cooperation. It starts with the development of the criteria brought forward by the Swiss Commission for Research with Developing Countries of 1998 and follows several traits to contemporary efforts of different funders in Europe. Such criteria offer concentrated insights into the normative dimensions of research cooperation.

Research partnerships between the North and South have produced positive results in terms of scientific productivity, research quality, innovative capacity, capacity building and improvements in processes, services and products. However, there have been concerns on how these achievements can be sustained in the long term in the research sites and beyond.

This paper presents the experiences of how a Post-doctoral research fellowship program (The European Foundations Initiative against Neglected Tropical Diseases [EFINTD]) resulted in the creation of the African Research Network for Neglected Tropical diseases (ARNTD). The paper highlights answers to questions like: (i) What were the benefits of the EFINTD? (ii) How have these gains been translated into ARNTD? (iii) What are the challenges in sustaining these gains under the ARNTD?