WORKSHOPS

This workshop will provide space for network members to share knowledge and expertise around Urban Research: African Universities as Urban Institutions. The workshop will provide a space for engaging with how the network partner universities are leveraging their role(s) in sustainable urban change.

This gathering will reflect on an archive of the heterogeneous efforts of universities to act in defiance of the normative trajectories of urbanization shaped through coloniality in order to concretely imagine what they might become as fully imbricated in the urbanization processes operative in their respective regions.

Key issues for discussion

1. Conceptual and structural issues around positioning of African Universities in knowledge creation spaces

a) How have African university institutions evolved?

b) What knowledge threads have aligned the academy with European institutions and what disobediences have emerged in  relation to carrying long?

c) What does the mapping of Pan-African ethos reveal about repositioning African Institutions?

d) Of respect for African ethos and knowledge threads, how does positionality shape respect, reliability, confidence, or utility?

e) What lessons do we draw from recent COVID-19 OMICRON variant and the knowledge politics that has transpired?

f) What structural issues inhibit African Universities to transition into urbanizing institutions to respond to realities of the economies?

2. Glocal embeddedness

a) What theoretical frameworks can help explain the disjuncture exhibited by African Universities from the realities of urban systems in which they are embedded – failing as urbanizing institutions?

b) What are the counter knowledge threads emerging from embeddedness of African Universities?

c) How are the national and local development priorities shaping the emergence of alternative discourses?

d) How and to what extent are the knowledge threads influencing intellectual discourse

3.  From basic to Trans-disciplinary urban science:

a) How has the longstanding epistemological orientation of participatory research evolved into co-creation of knowledge?

b) What are the motivations behind this transition and how is TD shaping the consolidation of Glocal embeddedness? 

c) What is the New African university likely to become in the wake of multiple knowledges and through what pathways?

d) From knowledge threads, to counter theorizations and multiplicity of knowledges, how can Pan-Africa ethos transcend data points in knowledge hierarchy?

This gathering will aim to:

- test and refine the questions identified to date

- identify perspectives on these questions within the network and gaps in understanding (and identify potential collaborative writing opportunities).

- develop novel propositions or framings to explore in further collaborative work around theorization and transition pathways

This workshop will provide a space for network members to share knowledge and expertise around Mobilising knowledge for just and sustainable urban transitions in Africa: Contexts and processes of knowledge (co)production in African universities. The workshop will provide a space for engaging network partner universities around the role of knowledge co-production in urban transformations.

Building on the wide set of issues raised in the primer, the workshop will focus on the key question: How can African universities (co)produce the knowledge needed for just and sustainable transitions in Africa?

Two broad themes will be examined: contexts and processes of knowledge production.

1. Contexts of knowledge production engages with the core problematic at the heart of the network - unpacking how institutional contexts in Africa and partner universities shape the production of knowledge for just and sustainable transitions. 4 questions underpin this theme:

a) how can the New African Urban University (NAUU) mobilise and lever international partnerships and funding schemes on their own terms to produce knowledge for just and sustainable transitions?

b) how can the NAUU position itself amongst diverse local interests and partners to realise just and sustainable transitions?

c) can we even talk of ‘the New African Urban University’ as a singular concept, given its rhizomatic nature, located in concentrated zones of political contestation? How should/could NAUUs be organised to mobilise knowledge for just and sustainable transitions?

d) what structural conditions are required for the NAUU to contribute to the production of epistemic justice?

2. Processes of knowledge production relates to processes of knowledge production within and beyond the boundaries of the African urban university. The 2 questions that underpin this theme are:

a) beyond methods, what strategies and tactics for knowledge mobilisation are needed for just and sustainable urban transitions?

b) how can different methodologies and methods – including but not limited to co-production –address knowledge hierarchies and epistemic exclusions?

This gathering will work to:

- test and refine the six sets of questions identified to date

- to identify existing knowledge and perspectives on these questions within the network and gaps in understanding (and identify potential collaborative writing opportunities)

- to develop novel propositions or framings to explore in further collaborative work

This workshop will provide space for network members to share knowledge and expertise around the third of our key network themes: Urban Competencies. The workshop will provide a space for engaging with how the network partner universities teaching about African cities related to and build the skills required to address urban transitions and transdisciplinary agendas.

This gathering was originally planned to address what urban competencies need to be addressed across the Universities in Africa to be able to respond to these challenges. We will aim to pivot slightly to think through how New African Urban University (NAUU) aims to contribute to the pedagogical space? From the previous session, the focus on Urban competencies sought to address the question:

What and how do we currently teach about African cities, and how does this relate to sustainable cities and teaching and development agendas?

The group acknowledged that there was a significant field of information already available, which deals with African Cities and education. Given this situation, it might be useful to focus on the following:

a) Examine the notion of ‘competency’ in relation of teaching and learning, and what kind of framing/limitation this metaphor/catch-all term imposes on the NAUU’s planning.

b) Discuss existing taxonomies and lexicons in the pedagogical/curriculum space as a way to shift away from the notion of competency toward creativity and imagination. Key to this will be to spend time finding our way from the one term to the others and understand what is and is not possible.

c) Examine local and decolonially-framed teaching approaches across the continent that make creativity and imagination evident.

d) Discuss ways to map/document critical ideological review of genealogies that could be useful as resource and cases studies

e) Development of a Compendium of Case Studies

This gathering will work to:

- cycle through the five points listed above in an open discussion format

- identify existing knowledge and perspectives on these points within the network and gaps in understanding (and identify potential collaborative writing opportunities)

- develop novel propositions or framings to explore in further collaborative work