Course | Terra Incognita Masterclass
Participatory Action Research: possibilities and challenges in the humanities
- Ruth Bush, Monique Kwachou, Serge Alain Agnessan, Finagnon André Gaga
- Date
- Wednesday 4 December 2024
- Time
- Location
-
Johan Huizinga
Doelensteeg 16
2311 VL Leiden - Room
- Conference Room (2.60)
Masterclass at the occasion of the 2024 Terra Incognita lecture in Colonial and Global History at Leiden University.
By Professor dr Ruth Bush, University of Bristol.
With participation online of Dr Monique Kwachou, Dr Serge Alain Agnessan, and Dr Finagnon André Gaga (TBC).
Open for Research Master students and PhD students. Lunch afterwards. For more information and registration, please contact: Sander van der Horst, at s.p.van.der.horst@hum.leidenuniv.nl
Masterclass
Important work has begun on the need for academic research to adapt to new circuits of knowledge and value, not least through ‘transformative research collaborations’ (Aboderin et al, 2023). Participatory Action Research is one set of methodological tools that can be helpful in the context of decolonizing research practice (Tuhiwai Smith, 1999; Lenette, 2022).
What do these collaborations look and feel like in practice? This class will invite discussion around the (im)possibilities of ‘convivial’ (Nyamnjoh) and ‘disobedient’ forms of scholarship. Specific reference will be made to our participatory action research in Higher Education contexts in Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin, and Cameroon, as part of the AFRIUNI ‘Creative Lives of African Universities: pedagogies of hope and despair’ project running from 2021 – 2027. This collaborative project seeks to explore representations and lived experiences of university life in four multilingual, historically francophone, African campuses. The research team will share experiences, lessons learned, and questions still unanswered.
This will be an interactive session. We invite workshop participants to read in advance the Africa Charter for Transformative Research Collaborations (available here). This charter has interesting potential implications for researchers working across other geographical regions, so please do not feel excluded if your geographical focus is not Africa. After reading, please prepare a 1-page reflection on ‘multi-layered power imbalances’ from your own research (or future research plans) and any ‘transformative principles’ that seem especially pertinent from the Charter. The reflection can take any form (bullet points, poetry, drawing, diagram… please do not feel constrained to academic prose!). Together, we will unpack some of the intentional strategies, (un)orthodoxies, obstacles, and joys involved in this work.
Ruth Bush is Professor of Comparative Literatures and Cultures at the University of Bristol, UK. Her research concerns literary and cultural production, with particular interests in material print cultures, translation, gender, and institutions. She currently convenes “AFRIUNI: Creative Lives of African Universities”, a collaborative ERC project about representations and lived experiences of universities in four multilingual, historically francophone, African cities (Dakar, Abidjan, Abomey-Calavi and Yaounde). Recent publications include: Translation Imperatives: African Literature and the Labour of Translators (CUP Elements, 2022) and a bilingual special issue of the Journal of African Cultural Studies: “Les universités africaines francophones: le campus sous toutes ses formes / African Universities: Translating Francophone Campus Forms”.
Teaching comparative literature at the Félix-Houphouët-Boigny University in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Alain S. Agnessan is also Research Associate in the French department at the University of Bristol. His recent research focuses on the economic thought of postcolonial fictions, epistemic practices of resistance and social discourse of francophone African paraliteratures. He recently co-edited Route et dé-routes dans les fictions francophones subsahariennes in the Revue des Lettres Modernes at Classiques Garnier.
GAGA Finagnon André is a doctor in sociology and a teacher-researcher, currently Research Associate in African Cultural Studies on the ERC-funded AFRIUNI ‘Creative Lives of African Universities’ project at the University of Bristol. He was trained at the Department of Sociology-Anthropology of the University of Abomey-Calavi (Benin) from 2006-2015, where he defended his doctoral thesis on the linguistic codes of corruption at the university. He has already worked as a research officer for several institutions in Benin and written about ten scientific articles.
Monique Kwachou is a Cameroonian writer, youth worker and researcher-practitioner in gender, education and development. A specialist in African feminist thought and participatory action research, she is currently Research Associate in African Cultural Studies on the ERC-funded AFRIUNI ‘Creative Lives of African Universities’ project at the University of Bristol where she oversees the Cameroon case study.