“At the end of this program, you will never remain the same again,” this statement by Cyril Obi, director of the African Peacebuilding Network (APN) program, in his closing remarks at end of the first APN-Next Gen joint virtual research methods training workshop organized for the fellows of the 2020 cohort has always resonated in my mind.
The Covid-19 pandemic pushed many countries to employ novel methods for distributing aid to impacted communities, including new data-driven technological approaches. Using social impact scenarios, Zoe Kahn and Joshua Blumenstock’s research examines the unanticipated dynamics that may arise from data-driven technical policies. Looking at Togo’s scheme to provide aid via a data-driven system based on recipients’ mobile money accounts, they reveal 3 unanticipated dynamics in this approach that would potentially negatively impact who receives aid as well as how the target community perceives this policy.
Nishaant Choksi, Sukanya Deogam and Kalpesh Rathwa’s research focuses on labor migrants from India’s “Scheduled Tribes”—mostly marginalized indigenous populations that depend on remittances. The authors look at differences both across and within two very different labor sending indigenous communities in terms of how they responded to the return of large numbers of migrants during the Covid-19 pandemic. One area of interest is the differing expectations of and orientations toward local government in the two communities in terms of handling dramatic socio-economic stresses caused by the reduction in remittances and the reintegration of migrants.
As academic collaborations become increasingly virtual and geographically widespread, researchers are faced with novel challenges, as well as opportunities, as they attempt to create equitable, effective research partnerships. In this essay, the authors highlight the importance of shared reflexive conversations in building a strong foundation for collaboration and the coproduction of knowledge, particularly in the midst of ongoing crises. In so doing, they reflect on their experience of planning research on social innovation in small-scale fishing communities in Africa and Asia, as a team spread across six countries.
The African Peacebuilding Network (APN) has made a significant impact on my academic career. If I have to pick one lesson from the APN Training Workshops that I attended as part of the APN grant I received in 2017, it is Prof. Thomas Tieku’s insistence on the absolute necessity of making our scholarly research and works intentionally African. I remember that, although I shared similar interests with some of my peers in the 2017 fellowship cohort and we were reading and debating similar materials and issues, we were not aware of each other’s works. We did not give enough weight to intentionally searching for debates underpinning African perspectives in African scholarship and publications. We also did not intentionally reflect on and relate to literature produced by African scholars.
I was very fortunate and privileged to have been among the early-career scholars to be awarded the Social Science Research Council’s African Peacebuilding Network (APN) Individual Research Grant (IRG) in 2018. It was the first time I had ever received a prestigious and competitive research award in the field of peace and conflict. I remember how excited I was when I learned of my selection. It was a turning point in my academic career. Receiving the award has changed the way I think about my research and intellectual capabilities.
I received the African Peacebuilding Network’s (APN) Individual Research Grant (IRG) in 2016. The decision to apply for the grant stemmed from my long search for research support and mentoring opportunities aimed at academics in the Global South. My persistent search for research grants led me to the APN in 2015. By then, Prof. Cyril Obi, the Program Director of the APN, was making frantic efforts to reach, train, and include young academics in the Mano River Union (MRU) area, West Africa’s conflict-affected sub-region in the activities of the APN.
I was awarded the African Peacebuilding Network (APN) Individual Research Grant in 2016 and the APN Book Manuscript Completion Grant in 2017. Both APN fellowships contributed immensely to my professional and personal development in ways that changed my whole perception of the world. The APN’s training workshops presented an incredible opportunity to learn to apply new research tools, critical reasoning, and key building blocks towards understanding both the relevant theories and practical aspects of working in the field of conflict resolution and peace.
Pierre Losson considers how artifact restitution from museums can repair structural violence to which nations and communities have been subjected—but can also engage in new forms of the same dynamics in the present. Returns reflect changing perceptions of museums and a reckoning with their roles in producing imperialist knowledge. Still, such restitutions are not simple processes, as Losson shows: One key question is, to whom are objects returned? And how do returns interrelate with nationalist dynamics and local politics?
I consider myself privileged to have been part of the African Peacebuilding Network’s (APN) scholarly community since its inception in 2012. As a social researcher with a little over 30 years of experience, I have engaged in dozens of research projects and professional activities in over 40 countries and produced numerous publications, many of them funded through competitive research grants. In this exciting intellectual journey, I have researched the broad areas of international development, higher education, African politics, conflictology, peacebuilding, and peace and security studies. The APN has been a major part of my exciting intellectual journey, especially in the last decade. The narrative of my initial contact and progressive engagements with the APN can be best explained within the changing dynamics of my research interests as a policy-engaged scholar.
