SSRC programs focus on scholarly innovation and border-crossing, deepening understanding of major public issues, and providing opportunities for social researchers. From Our Programs provides a window on current work at the SSRC, including intellectual breakthroughs and challenges; impacts on practice and policy; and the craft of organizing social knowledge production, dissemination, and use.
Mercury Project codirector Heather Lanthorn introduces the project’s newly updated Research Framework, a public good that supports researchers, funders, and policymakers by mapping intervention designs designed to increase vaccination demand and science-based decision-making along with policy-relevant outcomes of interest. The 18 teams in the Mercury Project Research Consortium—working in 18 countries around the world—use the framework in their projects.
Researcher Neil Lewis Jr. discusses how the SSRC’s Mercury Project's teams approach to research can improve the evidence generation process.
Tom Asher, the founding director of the Next Gen program, traces the historical rationale of the program, explains the program’s achievements, and presents some of its potential scalable challenges. Asher provides insights into how the Next Gen workshops seek to foster and embed excellence in African universities, and how the Next Gen program’s ethos turns individual inquiries into collective enterprise.
Eunice Kamaara, an advisory board member of the Next Gen program, reflects on some of the work of Next Gen fellows she has interacted with, to make a case for the need of doctoral students in Africa to challenge tradition, and at the same time prepare for disruption.
Anthony Diala, a Next Gen alumnus and workshop facilitator, reflects on some of the conceptual and methodological challenges that confront many a graduate student in sub-Saharan Africa, as well as how to manage the “social” aspects of completing a PhD in Africa.
Next Gen alumna Siphokazi Magadala observes that having worked with Next Gen fellows, most of them tend to over rely on scholarship from the Global North and use theories and concepts with little relevance to their research. She sees her intervention as that of guiding fellows to embed their research within lineages of African thought in the humanities and social sciences.
In their article analyzing the copious amounts of data Next Gen has collected for the past decade, Duncan Omanga and Shana Pareemamun, all staff of the Next Gen program, use this data to argue that Next Gen has consolidated its place in higher education funding in Africa. They conclude that the impact of Next Gen fellows and alumni within the social sciences and humanities has been considerable and shows the importance and need for more such funding of African doctoral students.
