[STS-Africa] STS Africa Affiliation

Tue Feb 18 11:11:58 SAST 2014

Dear Keith and colleagues,

Thank you very much for this very welcome initiative, and once again to convey my profound regrets at having been unable to join the meeting in Johannesburg last week.

>From my perspective, I would like to suggest some ways forwards, but in doing so I am mindful that I have missed some of your discussion and may be going over ground that you have already considered:

*         that in the first instance we work towards building a network, before asking people to consider putting funds in - that can come later, once we have moved toward a founding agreement, or perhaps even a constitution. My particular concern is to ensure  participation from smaller entities, from rural universities, and from emerging units that may be struggling to fund new work. The value of an established wide network outweighs the value of the few thousand rand that an entry fee would generate.

*         That we work towards a second meeting - perhaps at the Stellenbosch meeting in September - where we can discuss how to establish a regional (southern African) network (or subcommittee) that would be part of the Africa-wide network and which  would serve our collective goal of establishing a new field of study, specifically looking to the question o how to leverage regional funding resources

*         In my view it is very important to be able to build a network that benefits research projects on a wide range of campuses in the region, and would be very cautious about centralising the initiative too fast. That kind of interest - in creating a strong, dispersed network - could work towards sharing visiting scholars, for example, and doing the ground-work for establishing funding opportunities for research in this field. To me this is a way of working that would support the development of new student research, which is where a great deal of the energy for this work would happen, and it could also support colleagues to develop new graduate courses in this field.

I want to add that in June last year, I and a number of colleagues from five campuses and several faculties approached the NRF to support the development of science studies in South Africa, but the application for support for a meeting and some visitors was rejected by the NRF on the grounds that "funding for interdisciplinary research was already available".  The reviewers had clearly failed to grasp - or perhaps I had failed to adequately convey - the importance of supporting science - technology- society studies in the region.  Either way I think there needs to be a formal approach made to the NRF regarding this field, with a view (at least) to ensuring that applications get sent to reviewers familiar with (broadly) STS in the south. I'll be happy to share the document and the  reviews of it to those interested, with a view to restrategising a collective approach to regional sources of research and bursary funding.

Again, thank you to all involved for this initiative; am looking forward to working with you all, and to seeing what we can accomplish jointly.

Sincerely

Lesley Green.

Associate Professor: Anthropology
School of African and Gender Studies, Anthropology and Linguistics
&
PI: Environmental Humanities Initiative, Faculty of Humanities
University of Cape Town, South Africa

http://uct.academia.edu/lesleygreen

From: sts-africa-bounces at lists.uni-halle.de [mailto:sts-africa-bounces at lists.uni-halle.de] On Behalf Of Keith Breckenridge
Sent: 17 February 2014 08:03 AM
To: David Walwyn; sts-africa at lists.uni-halle.de
Subject: Re: [STS-Africa] STS Africa Affiliation

Hello David (and the list)
I think that we should keep open the prospect that affiliation will require some funding -- at least for the South African and northern institutions.   How much that should be I'm not sure -- the CHCI consortium fee is about $500.   For now letters of affiliation would be useful.
K

On Sun, Feb 16, 2014 at 8:32 PM, David Walwyn <David.Walwyn at up.ac.za<mailto:David.Walwyn at up.ac.za>> wrote:
Hi Keith

Looks fine to me ... are you thinking of any membership fee?  If not, I think it will be relatively straightforward to get UP Graduate School of Technology Management to agree.

I have one suggestion on the letter:

 change "for formal affiliation by units" to "for the formal affiliation of units, departments or schools"

Regards
David

>>> Keith Breckenridge  02/15/14 2:57 PM >>>
Dear Colleagues,

Below is a draft of a template letter.  Please make suggestions for
revision as you see fit.  The template can obviously be changed to suit any
specific institution or university.   My suggestion is that we simply list
universities as affiliate members of the network -- so, if Edinburgh can
sign up STS, Development Studies, and African Studies, it will still be
listed as a single university, although somewhere on the web site we need
to list each unit, and its members (and their academic biographies).

- - - -
The STS Africa network (http://www.sts-africa.org/) is an association of
scholars and institutions committed to the development of the field of
Science and Technology Studies on the African continent; the network
particularly works for the development of research and teaching capacity in
the inter-disciplinary field of STS at African institutions.  At the recent
meetings of the network in Johannesburg, members of STS Africa resolved to
encourage this project of institutionalization by calling for formal
affiliation by units based at universities on the African continent, and by
those based at universities around the world with a strong interest in
African research and research development.   By means of this letter the
___ based at ___ indicates its formal support and membership of the
STS-Africa network, and its willingness to participate in grant-writing and
other research administrative activities that will strengthen the field of
Science and Technology Studies on the African continent.  Our full Address
is ____ and the names and contact details of two members of the unit are
provided below:

k
--
Keith Breckenridge  *W I S E R* - The Wits Institute for Social and
Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand | Pbag 3, PO Wits,
 Johannesburg, South Africa, 2050 | Tel: +27117174272<tel:%2B27117174272>  | Fax: 0867654213<tel:0867654213> |
Web: wiser.wits.ac.za<http://wiser.wits.ac.za>

--
Keith Breckenridge  W I S E R - The Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of the Witwatersrand | Pbag 3, PO Wits,  Johannesburg, South Africa, 2050 | Tel: +27117174272  | Fax: 0867654213 | Web: wiser.wits.ac.za<http://wiser.wits.ac.za>
________________________________
UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN

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