CFP: 14th Annual Researching Africa Day Workshop

Call For Papers: 14th Annual Researching Africa Day Workshop

Saturday, 23rd February 2013
St Antony’s College, Oxford

Researching Africa Day provides graduate students with the opportunity to network with fellow researchers, exchange information, discuss research strategies and develop ideas in a constructive, stimulating and engaging environment. The workshop is open to all graduates working on Africa within the disciplines of history, politics, economics, development studies, literature, anthropology, social policy, geography, public health and the natural sciences.

The title of this year’s workshop is:

Researching Africa: The Flow of Research?

This year's workshop interrogates the process of researching Africa. We hope to explore how research progresses, as well as examine the issues and obstacles that confront researchers at various stages. We aim to question the idea that research always follows a sequence that begins in the library and ends on the word processor. We have divided the workshop into four panels that follow the accepted chronology of research, and we invite papers that either investigate these stages (from the acquisition of material to its presentation), or challenge their relationship to one another, in order to understand the 'flow' of research as it actually is.

The four panels are outlined as follows:

1) Accessing

How do we access material? From gaining ethical clearance, to finding our ‘field sites’ and negotiating ‘gatekeepers’, what issues and difficulties do we experience as researchers in Africa?

2) Acquiring

How do we acquire material? From archives and life histories, to images and data-sets, what choices does the researcher make in the process of collection?

3) Interrogating

How do we interrogate our material? From grounding personal experience to the application of theory, how do we make sense of what we have gathered during fieldwork?

4) Presenting

How do we present our material? From the format to the content, what dilemmas are faced and what impact do we make as researchers?

We invite papers on the panels outlined above. Presentations should be between 12 and 15 minutes, followed by a discussion between the panelists and the audience. Please send a title and abstract of your paper of 200 words by 25th January 2013.

We welcome participation from students beyond Oxford. While the cost of travel is not normally reimbursed, appeals for assistance with travel expenses will be considered in exceptional circumstances. We have limited funding and encourage speakers to pursue funding opportunities at their home institutions first. Accommodation for those who wish to stay the night may be available at certain colleges at your own expense.

Contact: edward.teversham@stx.ox.ac.uk