Conducting research and mentoring students in Africa
Abdul Karim Bangura, Joy A. Obando, Ishmael I. Munene, Chris Shisanya
Coédition NENA/CODESRIA
Présentation
This book is an outgrowth of the inaugural session of the Council for the
Development of Social Research in Africa (CODESRIA) College of Mentors
Institute convened at Kenyatta University in Nairobi, Kenya from 10 to 20
April, 2017. The authors of the book comprise the resource persons and 49 very
competitively selected doctoral candidates from across Africa that
participated in the Institute. The impetus for the book was the desire to
develop a tool that is suitable for conducting research and mentoring students
in Africa that other doctoral candidates, other writers, and mentors can use
in their pursuits. The College of Mentors is a part of the activities of
CODESRIA's African Diaspora Support to African Universities program. The
College is composed of senior academics from the Diaspora and within Africa in
higher education, the humanities and social sciences. This component entails
linking selected PhD candidates and their supervisors to mentors for purposes
of benefiting the candidates in their PhD progress. The mentors are expected
to offer advice regarding relevant literature, read and comment on draft
chapters of theses in preparation, liaise with the official advisors of the
doctoral candidates based at African universities and share their views about
the work of the students; and where possible, invite and host the students and
the official advisors as visiting scholars. The mentors may also be requested
to run various activities under this program such as institutes, research
methodology workshops and research networks. A joint workshop of the selected
students, their supervisors and mentors are held at the beginning to agree on
working modalities. The College seeks to both complement and strengthen the
support in capacity building in African universities in which CODESRIA is
engaged through the Small Grants Programme for Thesis Writing, the institutes,
and the methodology workshops. CODESRIA's African Diaspora Support to African
Universities seeks to mobilize African academics in the Diaspora to contribute
to the strengthening of African universities, the nurturing of new generations
of scholars in Africa in a culture of excellence, and the revitalization of
the social sciences, higher education studies, and the humanities. The
specific objectives of the initiative include the strengthening of PhD
programs and the curricula in the social sciences and the humanities (SSH);
contribute to the filling of gaps and dealing with shortages in teaching;
mentoring of young social science scholars in Africa, more generally; as well
as in strengthening relations between African academics in the Diaspora and
the institutions where they are based and African universities. The initiative
derives from CODESRIA's mandate as the leading Pan-African social science
council of the continent and its responsibility to help address the problem of
the shortage of qualified academic staff in many African universities both for
teaching and for PhD supervision. This problem has worsened with the creation
of hundreds of new public and private universities. The consequences of these
shortages include the lack of capacity in most of the social science and
humanities departments and schools in African universities to organize quality
postgraduate programs and conduct research. In some instances, capacity for
postgraduate supervision does not exist, and doctoral and masters students
take longer to complete their programs due to a lack or shortage of qualified
supervisors and mentors. On the other hand, the existence of a large African
academic Diaspora has been documented in numerous studies. Many of these
scholars are willing to lend a hand in the revitalization of universities in
their home countries or elsewhere in Africa. Other highly qualified academics
are circulating outside the universities, within Africa itself, and it would
be important to have an initiative that taps into the knowledge and skills
they have. Therefore, one effective way to address the shortage of qualified
senior academic staff and PhD supervision capacity in African universities is
to mobilize the academic Diaspora to support universities in Africa.
Caractéristiques
Éditeur | Coédition NENA/CODESRIA |
---|---|
Date de publication | 4 mai 2022 |
Langue | anglais |
Fiches UNIMARC | S'identifier |