North-South Knowledge Networks Towards Equitable Collaboration Between

Description

Since the 1990s, internationalisation has become key for institutions wishing to secure funding for higher education and research. For the academic community, this strategic shift has had many consequences. Priorities have changed and been influenced by new ways of thinking about universities, and of measuring their impact in relation to each other and to their social goals. Debates are ongoing and hotly contested. In this collection, a mix of renowned academics and newer voices reflect on some of the realities of international research partnerships. They both question and highlight the agency of academics, donors and research institutions in the geopolitics of knowledge and power. The contributors offer fresh insights on institutional transformation, the setting of research agendas, and access to research funding, while highlighting the dilemmas researchers face when their institutions are vulnerable to state and donor influence. Offering a range of perspectives on why academics should collaborate and what for, this book will be useful to anyone interested in how scholars are adapting to the realities of international networking and how research institutions are finding innovative ways to make North�South partnerships and collaborations increasingly fair, sustainable and mutually beneficial.

Sujets

• Education

Informations

• Publié par: African Minds
• Date de parution: 23 février 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781928331315
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 6 Mo

Extrait

Edited by
NORTH–SOUTH KNOWLEDGE NETWORKS
Tor Halvorsen
Towards equitable collaboration between academics, donors and universities & Jorun Nossum
NORTH–SOUTH KNOWLEDGE NETWORKS
Towards equitable collaboration between academics, donors and universities
Since the 1990s, internationalisation has become key for institutions wishing to secure funding
for higher education and research. For the academic community, this strategic shift has had
many consequences. Priorities have changed and been infl uenced by new ways of thinking
about universities, and of measuring their impact in relation to each other and to their social KNOWLEDGE
goals. Debates are ongoing and hotly contested.
In this collection, a mix of renowned academics and newer voices refl ect on some of the
realities of international research partnerships. They both question and highlight the agency
of academics, donors and research institutions in the geopolitics of knowledge and power.
The contributors offer fresh insights on institutional transformation, the setting of research NETWORKSagendas and access to research funding, while highlighting the dilemmas researchers face
when their institutions are vulnerable to state and donor infl uence.
Offering a range of perspectives on why academics should collaborate and what for, this book Towards equitable collaboration
will be useful to anyone interested in how scholars are adapting to the realities of international
networking and how research institutions are fi nding innovative ways to make North–South between academics, donors
partnerships and collaborations increasingly fair, sustainable and mutually benefi cial.
and universities
International co-operation has ushered in a new era as vast shifts in social,
political, economic and nancial terrains are unfolding in the world. This book
comes at an opportune time as the old paradigms, models and practices of
international co-operation – ineffective, incoherent, and inequitable as they have
been – are fracturing.
— Damtew Teferra, Director, International Network for Higher Education in
Africa, and Editor-in-Chief, International Journal of African Higher Education
A timely interrogation of North–South research collaborations in a context
of scarce resources, elucidating power and knowledge asymmetries while
fortifying the importance of international academic co-operation.
— Katri Pohjolainen, Senior Research Advisor, Swedish International
Development Cooperation Agency
The predicaments of international collaboration in knowledge production
are thoughtfully confronted in this volume. As much as there are constraints,
political choices also emerge as key to creating more equitable possibilities.
— Suren Pillay, Centre for Humanities Research, University of the Western Cape
Edited by
AFRICAN AFRICAN MINDS
MINDS Tor Halvorsen and Jorun Nossumwww.africanminds.org.za
NORTH–SOUTHNorth–South
Knowledge Networks
Towards equitable collaboration
between academics, donors
and universities
Edited by Tor Halvorsen
and Jorun Nossum
AFRICAN
MINDSPublished in 2016 by
African Minds
4 Eccleston Place, Somerset West, 7130, Cape Town, South Africa
[e-mail]
www.africds.org.za
and
UIB Global
PO Box 7800
5020 Bergen
http://www.uib.no/en/research/global
(CC) 2016
All contents of this document, unless specified otherwise, are licensed under a Creative
Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors. When quoting from any of the
chapters, readers are requested to acknowledge the relevant author.
ISBNs
978-1-928331-30-8 PRINT
978-1-928331-31-5 e-Book
978-1-928331-32-2 e-Pub
Copies of this book are available for free download at
www.africanminds.org.za and http://www.uib.no/en/research/global
ORDERS
For orders from Africa:
African Minds
Email: [e-mail]
For orders from outside Africa:
African Books Collective
PO Box 721, Oxford OX1 9EN, UK
Email: [e-mail]
Preface v
Acronyms and abbreviations xv
1 The role and impact of funding agencies on higher education and
research for development 1
Göran Hydén
2 ‘The first philosophers were astronomers’: Curiosity and innovation in
higher education policy 41
John Higgins
3 Research training, international collaboration, and the agencies of
Ugandan scientists in Uganda 57
Eren Zink
4 The status of research at three Ugandan universities 85
ABK Kasozi
5 Undoing the effects of neoliberal reform: The experience of Uganda’s
Makerere Institute of Social Research 109
Mahmood Mamdani
6 South–North collaboration and service enhancements at Makerere and
Bergen University libraries 135
Maria GN Musoke and Ane Landøy
7 North–South research collaborations and their impact on
capacity building: A Southern perspective 149
Johnson Muchunguzi Ishengoma
8 Death on campus: Is academic freedom possible for students
and academics at the University of Malawi? 187
Joe Mlenga
9 The crisis of higher education in Sudan with special reference to the
University of Khartoum, 1956–2014 203
Fadwa Taha and Anders Bjørkelo
10 Knowledge generation through joint research: What can North and
South learn from each other? 239
Ishtiaq Jamil and Sk Tawfique M Haque
11 Into the great wide open: Trends and tendencies in university
collaboration for development 255
Jorun Nossum
12 International co-operation and the democratisation of knowledge 277
Tor Halvorsen
About the authors 310Preface
Tor Halvorsen and Jorun Nossum
This book emerged out of a workshop held at the University of Bergen
in June 2015 with participants from a number of the projects within
the Norwegian Higher Education and Development (NORHED)
programme. A number of other academics who are interested in how
development aid can promote higher education and research have also
contributed to the book.
The topic of academic collaboration between South and North is not
new. However, during the workshop it became clear that, as the
academic world becomes more and more marked by competition, it is time
to rethink academic collaboration, in relation to what space it can claim
in programmes such as NORHED’s.
In our call for papers to be presented at the workshop, we indicated
that the NORHED programme builds on ideas about true knowledge
societies being based on the notion of gift societies that can operate at
national and international (or post-national) level.
To quote our call for papers, we hoped to bring together academics
who
choose to collaborate across borders and boundaries in the
interests of improving knowledge as we wish and think best.
— v —NORTH–SOUTH KNOWLEDGE NETWORKS
We use publications from wherever we can get them, and
publish what we know openly. We stand on one another’s
shoulders, and we all contribute. The well-known ‘regulars’
on curriculums all over the world are so because they build
on the undercurrent of researchers. Lesser-known
researchers appear in the often very long lists of references of articles
or books. Thus, the academic community is like a gift-society,
where we constantly exchange bits and pieces of knowledge,
or create networks for a more systematic structuring of these
gift-relations for the benefit of all.
Our call for papers however also noted that
this gift-society is however easily distorted. It is influenced
by competitive forces from the outside and misplaced social
ambitions on the inside. These undermine and transform the
gift-relations on which academic knowledge-production
depends. Today, this can be observed in the ways universities
are being transformed for competition. Knowledge resources
increasingly become tools for promoting this competition.
The academic honour that was earlier driving the exchanges
of knowledge (gifts), and which constitute a raison d’être for
all academic work, is transformed into organisational
resources for promotion of one’s own position. What
determines this position is reputation gained from external
evaluations, external rating, systems of ranking, and all
kinds of citation and other measurable quantities of
production. Rankings seem to be more discussed by professors than
their latest books. Resources are spent on the so-called ‘best’,
who are isolated in centres of excellence where they are
unable to live up to their gift commitments. This takes an extra
toll on the ‘next-best’, to the degree that they may vanish:
the pool of knowledge diminishes. In such a scenario,
universities develop strategies to enhance reputation, important in
external evaluations, which give access to resources. Within
these strategies, collaboration with universities that may
— vi —PREFACE
improve one’s perceived standing in society becomes
important. Collaboration must be justified as a tool for better
positioning oneself in c