[SSC] Engaged research

[Heather Hughes]

Dear all

Yesterday I attended an inspirational event at the Institute of Commonwealth
Studies at the University of London (which is why, regrettably, I didn't
attend the 'Academic Labour' day in Lincoln....!!) but thought it would be
good to share one or two aspects, since they seem relevant to what the SSC
is about.

The event was a symposium to mark the 30th anniversary of the assassination
of the South African activist, Ruth First, who was blown up by a parcel bomb
in the Centre for African Studies at Eduardo Mondlane University in Maputo
in 1982. She had been forced out of South Africa in the early 1960s and had
spent time at the Universities of Manchester and Durham, before being
appointed as director of the CAS in Maputo in 1978. In this capacity, she
developed a new approach to research and learning: 'engaged empirical
research'. At the symposium, several of her colleagues from that time spoke
movingly of what this had meant. They included Alpheus Manghezi, her main
co-author; Annamaria Gentili, now Professor of African Studies at the
University of Bologna; Bridget O'Laughlin, Professor at the Institute of
Social Studies, Erasmus University, Rotterdam; Marc Wuyts, Professor at the
Institute of Social Studies, The Hague; and Colin Darch, Archivist at the
University of Cape Town. Interestingly, they all referred to Ruth First's
method as PEDAGOGIC. Their motivation was not to impose order on chaos, but
to change an unfair world - one which they had not made, but wanted to
change. Other characteristics:

Staff and students met to decide what research to undertake; final decisions
were made collectively. 'Everybody brought something to these sessions' was
the message over and over. Undertaking research 'in the field' was the
pre-eminent way of learning about anything - secondary sources etc were
assembled and worked through after decisions about what primary research
would be done had been taken. 

They were driven by a concern with present-day problems, but absolutely
accepted the need to treat these in historical perspective. 

All results/write-ups were presented as documents for policy use -  a
journal was founded for this purpose. 

There was a sense of urgency to everything they did: no room for complacency
in times of crisis!

Can we learn anything? Heather