AI-informed collective intelligence for inclusive research capacity in global education: a UK-Pakistan empirical framework

With increasing priorities in engineering education like sustainability, equity, and ethical accountability, scalable methods are needed to support an inclusive research collaboration across transnational partnerships. This paper introduces the TNS–AI-CI pedagogical framework, developed through the UK–Pakistan Transnational Synergy (TNS) Project, to examine how AI can support equitable and accountable co-supervision and collaborative academic writing in higher education. Using a convergent mixed-method design (platform analytics, surveys, reflections, and interviews) across five partner universities, we observed statistically significant improvements in transparency of authorship, supervisor accountability, and women’s confidence as academic leaders, including an average supervision feedback time of under five days and post-workshop self-efficacy scores of ≥4.7/5. This contribution has been validated, and a transferable framework is proposed for AI-informed collective intelligence which supports highly equitable and ethically informed knowledge production in STEM.