The Hebrew University partnership with University of Melbourne is based on collaborative research. The partnership was initiated in 2008 with the signature of a Memorandum of Understanding and then renewed in 2018, for the fostering of student exchange and research collaborations. In 2012 a Joint Research Workshop Grants Program was launched, to enable faculty members from both institutions to hold joint workshops with the goal to foster mutual research and grant submissions.
The partnership was expanded in 2019 with the launch of the Jerusalem-Melbourne Joint PhD Program, open to all academic fields. The new program involves doctoral students working together in a research group that is supervised by both Australian and Israeli faculty. Every year, the two universities jointly publish a call for applications for joint research projects, whereby pairs of researchers representing both the University of Melbourne and the Hebrew University together propose research projects for PhD clusters from both institutions. PhD students in the program are enrolled in both institutions and are eligible to receive a PhD recognized by both universities. They must spend at least one year at the University of Melbourne and one year at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.