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The Creative Lives of African Universities: Pedagogies of Hope and Despair

Project description

Exploring life and creative endeavours in the African campus

In the last three decades, during Africa’s industrialisation, higher education has made big steps in development. Life in academia and the diverse cultural production within its context have multiple influences on the external perception of education. The EU-funded AFRIUNI project is studying the cases of universities in Senegal, Côte d’Ivoire, Benin and Cameroon to explore the cultural representations and lived experiences of university life on the African continent. The project will focus on the forms that structural and epistemic violence, physical discomfort and individual and collective self-realisation obtain within these contested institutions in material, affective and aesthetic terms.

Objective

AFRIUNI explores cultural representations and lived experiences of university life on the African continent. Building on insights from critical pedagogy and decolonial thought, the project considers in material, affective, and aesthetic terms the forms of structural and epistemic violence, physical discomfort, and individual and collective self-realization that obtain within these contested institutions. The project asks: 1. How are African universities represented in creative work and how do these representations inform the perception of education? 2. What do student experiences of campus life tell us about the human experience of uncertainty in the global South? 3. What are the languages of creative expression in these universities and how does translation manifest? What does multilingualism contribute to the experiences of hope, resilience, uncertainty and despair experienced there? 4. How do debates around epistemic justice and engaged pedagogy manifest in historically francophone sites? 5. How can fine-grained understanding of cultural production and reception on campus inform local and global thinking about education? The work responds to these questions by exploring case studies in Senegal, Cte dIvoire, Benin and Cameroon. The projects first strand will document and analyse cultural representations (including literature, hip hop, film, theatre) of the universities; the second strand will map the histories of literary curricula/pedagogies; the third strand will focus on students lived experiences. Throughout, the project will test and develop cutting-edge decolonial (participatory, co-productive, digital) methodologies for Humanities research. AFRIUNI is acutely attuned both to the legacies of imperial linguistic and cultural structures and the significance of place-based learning. It will drive forward connections between these case studies and local, continental, and global scales of debate concerning decoloniality, creativity, and education.

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Topic(s)

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Funding Scheme

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ERC-STG - Starting Grant

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Call for proposal

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(opens in new window) ERC-2020-STG

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Host institution

UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL
Net EU contribution

Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.

€ 1 500 000,00
Address
BEACON HOUSE QUEENS ROAD
BS8 1QU Bristol
United Kingdom

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Region
South West (England) Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Bristol/Bath area Bristol, City of
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
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Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

€ 1 500 000,00

Beneficiaries (1)

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