Africa: CODESRIA scholarly writing and research methodology workshop

CODESRIA

Programme Announcement: Scholarly Writing and Research Methodology Workshop

Special Session for Mano River Area: Sierra Leone, Liberia & the Gambia

Date: 12 – 16 May, 2008

Venue: University of Sierra Leone Campus, Freetown

The Council for the Development of Social Science Research in Africa (CODESRIA) is pleased to announce its programme of training for scholarly writing and research methodologies targeted at postgraduate students and younger members of the teaching staff of the Universities of Sierra Leone, The Gambia and Monrovia. The writing and methodology training workshop is scheduled to take place in Freetown, Sierra Leone, from 12 – 16 May, 2008 on the campus of the University of Sierra Leone. The workshop will be conducted as part of the CODESRIA Annual Writing Workshop Series. It will be accompanied by a special session for the dissemination of recent publications by CODESRIA, especially those of direct relevance to West Africa and the Mano River countries.

Since the early 1980s, African universities have increasingly faced pressing challenges to imbue the younger generation of academic staff and research students that populate them with the methodological and writing skills they need to excel in their learning, teaching and research. The Universities of Sierra Leone and Monrovia have been particularly affected, especially following years of war that have depleted financial resources, intensified the brain drain, dislocated infrastructure, and crippled higher education significantly. Created in 1999, the University of The Gambia is amongst the youngest higher education institutions in Africa. It faces pressing challenges to imbue its largely young and fledgling staff and student body with the methodological and writing skills they need to excel in their teaching, learning and scholarship.

The proposed workshop, intended as a follow up to two initial workshops organised in The Gambia and Sierra Leone in October 2005 and 2006 respectively, is designed as a modest response from a pan-African network of social researchers to attend to the challenges faced by junior faculty and post-graduate students in a university struggling to recover from prolonged crises, and also to share with students and staff of the Universities of Sierra Leone, The Gambia and Monrovia the results of research that CODESRIA has funded in the past that are relevant to their countries and disciplines.

As an institution with a long track record in scholarly publishing, CODESRIA has increasingly been concerned with the difficulties experienced by the third and fourth generations of African social scientists and scholars active in the social sciences and humanities effectively to communicate the results of their work to a wider community of peers within and outside Africa. Linked to this problem are the methodological deficiencies that are increasingly in evidence in the work of younger scholars and students at a time of overall decline in the investments made by universities in training in research methods. This desperate situation, which in the case of the Mano River countries has been exacerbated by the ravages of war, demands urgent and sustained attention. The CODESRIA Annual Writing Workshop Series is designed to fill the observed gaps in university-level training that have affected the capacities of younger researchers to muster a written argument, project an informed point of view, develop a presentational/analytic style, cite references correctly, and adequately document manuscripts submitted for consideration for publication.

In addition to the training opportunity which it will offer, the workshop will also afford staff and students of the universities concerned a chance to become more familiar with CODESRIA and its activities. It will feature presentations and practical demonstrations by a team of four seasoned scholars under whose guidance and mentorship a selected group of postgraduate students and younger scholars will be exposed to the key steps that are required for scholarly research, writing and publishing. Exercises will be offered to demonstrate different approaches to:
1) Choosing and designing a research project;
2) Determining the methods and data collection techniques to be used;
3) Operationalising the project;
4) Analysing the data;
5) Presenting findings, including a full documentation of sources and citation of references; and
6) Dissemination of findings. All staff and postgraduate students of the Universities of Sierra Leone, The Gambia and Monrovia (the faculties of Social Sciences and Humanities in particular) wishing to participate in the workshop are invited to send a letter of application registering their interest to the address below. The letter should include the bio-data of the applicant, their disciplines, the research areas in which they are interested, and information on any experience they may have had in scholarly writing and publishing. The deadline for the receipt of applications for the workshop is 31 March, 2008. Admission to participate in the workshop will be limited to 30 persons.
All applications should be addressed to:
CODESRIA
2008 Annual Writing Workshop, BP 3304, Dakar, Senegal.
Tel.:+221-33 825 98 22/23 Fax: +221-33 824 12 89 E-mail: [email][email protected] Web Site : http://www.codesria.org