BRIDGE — Brain Research International Data Governance & Exchange
Overview
BRIDGE is a Wellcome Trust-funded initiative building responsible, sustainable governance frameworks for the cross-border sharing of brain and mental health research data. Launched in November 2023 as a three-year project (2023–2026), it is led from the University of Texas at Austin and hosted on INCF infrastructure as a formal INCF Neuroscience Community member. Its long-term goal is to form a global consortium that will develop, operate, and maintain an International Data Governance Framework (IDGF), a set of principles and operational tools helping investigators, institutions, repositories, and funders navigate the varying legal, ethical, and technical landscapes that obstruct international data sharing in neuroscience. Partners include ZHAW (Switzerland), the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), IDOR (Brazil), and the University of Oxford (UK).
Regional activities
BRIDGE organises regional workshops so the IDGF is built on diverse governance realities rather than Global North defaults. An ambassador programme brings in legal, technology, ethics, and lived-experience experts from Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, and beyond to embed those perspectives in the framework, and the project collaborates actively with the African Brain Data Network. Workshops to date:
- December 2023 — first regional workshop, Lagos, Nigeria
- June 2024 — Latin America workshop, IDOR Rio de Janeiro
- April 2025 — second Africa regional workshop, Marrakesh, Morocco
- December 2025 — second global workshop, Johannesburg, South Africa
Connections
Resources
- https://bridge.incf.org
- https://braindatagovernance.org (alternate domain)
- https://bridge.incf.org/mission
- https://www.psychologicalscience.org/publications/observer/bridge-brain-research-data.html (APS Observer, March 2024, overview)
- https://www.thetransmitter.org/data-sharing/sharing-africas-brain-data-qa-with-amadi-ihunwo/ (The Transmitter, July 2025, confirms three-year timeline)
- https://www.zhaw.ch/en/research/project/74112 (ZHAW project record, confirms November 2023 start)
- https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2021.11.017 (Gau et al. 2021, Neuron, international data governance principles)