Decolonizing Research Methodologies: A Research School supporting empirical data collection, fieldwork relations, ethical challenges, and transnational approaches

This programme aims to support the creation, organization, and the implementation of an interdisciplinary research school that would bring together Burkinabe, Malian, Swedish, and Tanzanian researchers and research projects together in a common collaborative framework.

The overall objective is to strengthen conceptual, theoretical, methodological and practical work for decolonizing research methodologies.

The programme focuses mainly on qualitative research and societal engagement in the humanities and social sciences, and is geared towards data collection, research relations, ethics, and transnational approaches in the organization and implementation of research and research training.

More specifically, the programme aims: 1) to critically assess and transform the ways in which qualitative research is organized and implemented; 2) to strengthen the development of empirically grounded and critical research methodologies; 3) to interrogate fieldwork relations and research ethics; and 4) to promote transnational approaches.

It is built around qualitative empirical research, and societal engagement through courses (both in situ/in persona, and online), summer schools in the collaborating countries, regular online seminar series, joint analytical workshops, collaborative publications, and a final international conference.

It will seek to foster a critical, and yet practically oriented and relevant, academic culture among PhD students and faculty.