Ashesi University is one of three universities in Africa selected to organize and host workshops to train junior faculty in rigorous qualitative research methods. The “Network of Excellence for Qualitative Research Methods; Sub-Saharan Africa” project is supported by the EDULINK programme (funded by the European Union and managed by the Secretariat of the ACP Group of States). The nearly half-a-million Euro (€) project, initiated by the Institute of Development Studies (University of Sussex, UK) will be hosted by three main hub institutions in Africa - Ashesi University College (Ghana), University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) and the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa). The program in Ghana will be facilitated by Ashesi faculty members Dr. Esi Ansah and Gideon Porbley.
The project’s aim is to enhance the independent capacity of Sub-Saharan Africa’s institutions of higher education to conduct rigorous and innovative qualitative and multi-method social science research. Special attention will be given to interdisciplinary approaches to governance-related research. It will also provide a new generation of African scholars with access to cutting edge and innovative research design strategies, break the relative international isolation often felt by African scholars, and also to establish a training and research network that will stimulate and sustain the uptake of these methods by African institutions of higher education. Planning is underway for the half-a-million Euro project, and the training workshops are scheduled to begin in August 2009, and end by June 2011.
Working together with partners in the United Kingdom, Denmark, Tanzania, South Africa, the United States and Germany, the project will combine ‘in-residence’ workshops, on-line learning through a Virtual Research Unit, and a short fieldwork component.
Applications are being accepted from junior faculty across West Africa for participation in the workshop.
Detailed information on the project is available on the project website – www.qrmafrica.org.