North-South Experiences of Doctoral Training for Development in Africa: The Impact of Partnership
Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin
Wednesday, 07 November 2012
Thank you Martina.
Colleagues, Ladies and Gentlemen, Distinguished Guests,
You’re all very welcome to the Trinity Long Room Hub, and to the fourth annual Trinity College Development Research week.
As Martina has said, this is a week of modules, lectures, and public talks on development issues. Today we look at models of partnership in collaborative doctoral programmes between Trinity College and higher education institutions in six African countries.
I’m particularly pleased to be addressing you on this subject. During the summer I took the opportunity to visit the National University of Rwanda, NUR, which partners Trinity through the joint Trinity/UCD Masters in Development Practice – the MDP. It was a wonderful visit.
As it was outside term time I was able to take a week and tour round Rwanda, including two national parks. It was my longest official visit to a university and to a country, and it reinforced our strong commitment to Trinity’s International Development Initiative and to our Global Relations Strategy.
Rwanda, as we know, has suffered horrifically, in ways that it’s difficult to even contemplate, and which I’m certainly not qualified to comment on. I can only say that as an academic and the head of a university, I was impressed by what I saw of the National University of Rwanda and Kigali Institute of Science and Technology – their educational priorities, and these institutions opening up educational opportunities to young Rwandans. I enjoyed great discussions with the rectors and staff on innovation in universities, and the place of academic freedom, and the returns that can be obtained from it.
As we know, education is a priority of international development - countries which invest in education invest in their future. I was delighted to find Rwanda so committed to the third level sector and I’m really pleased that Trinity is partnering NUR, to the great mutual benefit of both our institutions.
Meeting Trinity students engaged on field work in Rwanda brought home the importance of inter-institutional collaborations and of student and staff exchanges.
Not all the studying nor all the virtual communications in the world can replace the experience of actually living, working and researching in another country. The students I met were gaining phenomenal experiences, and their perspectives were constantly being challenged. Their research projects were very interesting: I remember a stimulating discussion, for example, on the the mechanism of setting prices in coffee bean coopereratives.
Academic collaboration between countries is about combining best practices, and learning from each other.
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I'd like to talk briefly now about Trinity's commitment to international development, and about our global strategy.
The Trinity International Development Initiative, or TIDI as we call it, was established five years ago, in 2007. The need for this initiative arose from our understanding that Development should not be isolated as a separate discipline since it is relevant to numerous Schools and research interests.
Over a hundred Trinity staff members across eighteen Schools identify as having a research interest in International Development, including researchers in biodiversity, environment, IT, human rights, economics, and health. Development plays to Trinity’s strengths as a multi-discipline university.
What this means is that international development has joined the growing number of areas that we, in Trinity, treat as multidisciplinary and cross-faculty. I think also of neuroscience and ageing, and also the research themes here in the Trinity Long Room Hub such as ‘The Human Condition’. We have stated in our strategic plan that “we value the university as an interactive, multidisciplinary community with a passion for ideas and a love of learning”. We believe that problems are best solved, and inspiration best gained, by combining strengths across disciplines and levels of analysis.
Combining strengths also means going beyond the college walls. As well as being multidisciplinary and cross-faculty, Development is also, by priority and design, inter-institutional. Researchers in Development have always forged links with colleagues in developing countries and students have undertaken field work abroad. This has been happening for very many years. In recent times such connections have been formalised and brought to a new level with, for instance, the memoranda of understanding signed with universities in Uganda, Rwanda and South Africa.
Last year International Development was named as a priority research theme for Trinity. We want all our research areas to show the level of inter-institutional engagement demonstrated by TIDI, and we want to further strengthen such engagements. Today we’re comparing and contrasting three different models of partnership in collaborative programmes with higher education institutions in six African countries. And it’s quite an achievement to be in a position to compare three different partnerships with six different countries.
Development is a proactive research area. It deals with vital issues such as global health, climate change, gender studies, biodiversity, and human rights. It’s vital for research findings in these areas to inform national and international policy. As such it’s important for development research centres, like TIDI, to have access to, and link-up with, government and international aid and development bodies. I’m delighted to say that TIDI’s engagements on this front have been excellent.
In the context of the Doctoral Training in Development Programme under discussion today, and of Trinity’s Development Research Week, I would like to acknowledge the support of Irish Aid and of the HEA. We look forward to Dr Vincent O’Neill from Irish Aid addressing us later. Irish Aid is recognised the world over for its remarkable work on poverty eradication, combating disease, empowering women and improving access to education in developing countries. Trinity is honoured to be assisting with the research that supports Irish Aid missions.
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Building global networks through international research collaborations and jointly-delivered programmes, and improving the student educational experience through travel and cultural exchanges have been identified as key actions within the new Global Relations Strategy.
This strategy - which also looks to increase the number of international students in Trinity and to develop alumni networks – was approved by the Board in May of this year.
It is a new Strategy - but it formalises a mission and a philosophy as old as the College itself. Trinity has never been about splendid isolation. It has always reached out to the wider world and delivered an education that is open, explorative, flexible, questioning, and sceptical in the best sense.
So, our Global Relations Strategy represents no radical new direction. Being open to experience and to the world is a long-standing core educational principle.
What is new is that we’re now being proactive about building global networks, and we recognise the great opportunity presented by improved travel and new revolutionary means of communication. In previous centuries, it simply wasn’t possible for Trinity, or any university in these islands, to offer joint programmes with universities in Africa or other continents. Now that travel and communications do allow this, international collaborations are not an optional extra, but an imperative. To fail to build global educational networks would be to go against our core principles.
We recognise that while we’re fortunate in Trinity’s international heritage, if we want to maximise potential, we have to strategise, prioritise and allocate resources. We must improve our messaging abroad and focus global interest on Trinity.
We have to co-ordinate all activities towards this core aim of making Trinity a university of global consequence. We will do this through collaborative research, through internationalising staff and students, through establishing new jointly-delivered courses, and through building on the great resource of our alumni – of which there are now 90,000, living in over 130 countries around the world.
We launched the Global Relations Strategy just two months ago. It is a key priority of my provostship. But I don’t need to lecture the International Development Initiative about global relations.
Indeed, TIDI leads the way on this and provides an example to the whole College about best practice in developing global networks and improving the student educational experience.
So, in conclusion, I congratulate all involved in making TIDI a success. The findings of today’s conference on the assessments of different models of partnership will have relevance not only for Doctoral Training in Development but for future collaborative programmes in other college research areas.
Thank you for your attention.
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