AAP is excited to be hosting our next Public Dialogue “The Engaged University: Working with policy makers, the private sector, and communities to advance African higher education transformation” on Wednesday, September 22nd at 9:00am-10:30 EDT. This dialogue session will be co-hosted by our affiliates at @The University of Botswana and those at @SARUA. This session will examine innovative strategies for African universities to engage across all sectors and the impact these engagements are having on the transformation of the African higher education sector. AAP recognizes that universities are now seeing themselves as catalysts for positive change in their communities and beyond, and is proud to be a part of this progress.    This series will be done with the help of @University World News as AAP’s media partner. Read more

CONVERSATION | 9 Sept 2021 | 16.00-17.45 CET | Zoom online   As part of the Thinking With series, we invite Souleymane Bachir Diagne to discuss his work in conversation with Aude Christel Mgba and Ryan Skinner. In African Art as Philosophy: Senghor, Bergson and the Idea of Negritude (2011), Souleymane Bachir Diagne writes of Léopold Sédar Senghor’s lifelong project to think through “affirmation of the self [as] a natural reaction to colonial domination” (188): “Beyond affirming the aesthetic virtues revealed in pieces of art created by Africans, Senghor wished to stress the metaphysics they offered for reflection: along with the art through which it had been written, he wished to rescue a worldview, a feeling and a thinking that were also contributions to the humanism of tomorrow by African-being-in-the-world” (7-8).   “In our efforts at the Nationaal Museum van Wereldculturen to better honor and listen to the lives the ‘objects’ in our museums have led and wish to lead, we hope to better think more reciprocally in relationship to these objects and the communities invested in their being. We are compelled by Diagne’s work to think more deeply about the histories, afterlives, and temporalities in which our objects exist. How might we allow the objects to speak better from themselves, for themselves, while all the while honoring the complex positionalities of those who are enjoined to engage these objects? We understand those persons who are called upon to better honor the objects to be: those living in the places where the objects were obtained (gifted, seized, stolen); those who relate to African art from diasporic sensibilities; and those who are implicated by a colonial past as perpetrator and/or who benefit from systems of privilege, as per Michael Rothberg.  Together, in Relation, and even thanks to the tensions implied by Glissantian Opacity, we hope to better be responsible to our work and engagement as professionals and visitors to our ethnographic museums.”   More about Zoom event: https://www.materialculture.nl/en/events/thinking-souleymane-bachir-diagne-african-art-phi...   Registration for Zoom event: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_X6gKuBv3RVuw5FEGTCE6uw Read more

The deadline for submitting a paper for the panel "Relations to Plants as a Heritage From Below in African Cities" at the next African Studies Association of Africa (ASAA) conference, at the University of Cape Town (South Africa) from 11 to 16 April 2022, has been extended to 30 September. The submission of the paper proposal (max. 250 words) has to be done via this platform: https://2022conference.as-aa.org/submit-work/call-for-abstracts/   ASAA encourages paper presenters to reflect on the conference theme and address issues outlined in the theme description. With a massive number of abstracts submitted for presentations at ASAA conferences, the ASAA2022 Conference Committee is dedicated to guaranteeing a timely and fair review process with the international norms of double-blind peer review.    The decisions of the Scientific Committee will be communicated on 14th November 2021. ASAA early-bird registration will open on 1st November 2021. See eligibility criteria and learn about the application process in the link below! Call for abstracts – ASAA2022 (as-aa.org)   For any queries with the above, please email: as-aa2022.org@uct.ac.za Read more

Graduate Teaching Assistantship Program (GTA) During the annual meeting of Vice Chancellors/Presidents/Principals/Rectors of RUFORUM Member Universities (see links about RUFORUM flier and RUFORUM at a Glance) held on 11th November 2020, the Vice Chancellors re-affirmed their commitment to the Graduate Teaching Assistantship Program that they initiated in 2014. The objectives of the GTA are to: i) Improve the quality of higher education and increase the pool of PhD-level trained academic staff in African universities; ii) Provide opportunities for the doctoral research to contribute more directly to African development; iii) Strengthen inter- university collaboration in the field of higher education in Africa; and iv) Promote staff mobility among RUFORUM member universities, and across Africa. Following the meeting of the Vice Chancellors on 11th November 2020, the RUFORUM Secretariat is pleased to announce the availability of training opportunities at the different Member Universities as part of the GTA arrangement. The Secretariat invites for more offers from the other member universities to train GTA candidates. Under the GTA arrangement: The sending universities nominate the staff to be trained and RUFORUM Secretariat helps to get them placed in receiving (host) Universities The sending universities commit to pay for travel, health insurance, upkeep and research of their staff under training The receiving/host universities waive the fees and associated costs, and provide accommodation for the admitted GTA Fellows Once admission process is completed, the sending and host universities and the nominated GTA Fellow sign a Tripartite Agreement to guide the hosting and training of the Fellow In some cases where opportunities exist, the host University may attach the GTA Fellow to the research program at the hosting university The RUFORUM Secretariat facilitates the GTA arrangement and follows up on the GTA training The nominations by the Vice Chancellors for the available positions should be submitted to RUFORUM Executive Secretary at secretariat@ruforum.org as soon as possible.   Learn more: https://ruforum.wordpress.com/2021/08/09/postgraduate-training-opportunities-under-the-ruforum-3/?utm_source=RUFORUM+Mailing+List&utm_campaign=d18db56afe-RUFORUM+Weekly+-+Vol.3+No.25_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcfbb8a0b-d18db56afe-346973753&ct=t()&goal=0_1fcfbb8a0b-d18db56afe-346973753&mc_cid=d18db56afe&mc_eid=d95cf18a8dn  Read more

The Humanities and Arts Research Program (HARP) Development program provides funds to support faculty who are conducting important research leading to creative and performance projects or activities in the arts and humanities. This limited funding is designed to support faculty in the development of projects that seem likely to enhance the reputation of the faculty member and the university.  Within the Development program, there are two panels that conduct the reviews: the Humanities Research panel and the Exhibition and Performance panel. The Humanities Research panel will review applications that are supporting research projects and scholarship broadly related to the humanities. The Exhibition and Performance panel will review proposals that support scholarship and creative activities leading to an exhibit or performance. See the FAQs for clarification. The deadline for HARP Development applications will be in early-October, with awards announced in February. Funding will be available for a two year period beginning on March 1.  What types of projects are eligible? HARP development projects should: produce results or a product that is likely to receive external recognition (e.g., through a publisher's interest or through available distribution or exhibition venues) or be used beyond MSU. ultimately lead to a scholarly or creative product (e.g., book, CD, musical composition, play, artwork) with the potential for significant impact in the discipline or related areas.  Who is eligible? Tenured and tenure-track faculty Faculty with uninterrupted, multi-year, fixed term appointments Faculty with one-year appointments who are able to obtain written confirmation from their department chair of pending appointment through the duration of the grant (letters from the chair should be uploaded as part of the project description) Academic specialists in the continuing appointment system who have the majority of their effort in the research category Part time faculty who 1) have had an appointment for two consecutive years prior to the date of their submission, 2) have a commitment from their department chair indicating that their appointment will continue through the duration of the granting period, and 3) have an appointment of at least 50% with MSU Faculty from Arts and Letters, Communication Arts and Sciences, James Madison, Lyman Briggs, Music, Social Science, and the Residential College in the Arts and Humanities are eligible to apply for HARP funding. NOTE: Faculty emeriti are not eligible to apply for HARP funding. NOTE: Faculty rank and proximity to promotion and tenure decisions will not be considered in the evaluation of proposals. All applications will be evaluated on the merit of the work being proposed.  For more information or to apply, visit the MSU Research and Innovation website Read more

The Discretionary Funding Initiative (DFI), funded by the Michigan State University Foundation, provides bridge funds for tenure stream faculty for additional studies needed for resubmission of an unsuccessful, but nearly fundable, grant application to the same program within a funding agency.  To request funding from this program, faculty should submit a proposal via the grant proposal system. Applicants will be expected to provide copies of their previous external reviews, if applicable, and describe the work that will be completed to address the comments provided in those documents. The research associate dean of the applicant's college (lead college if appointed in multiple colleges) will review applications, and submit a prioritized list to the Office for Research and Innovation (OR&I). Requests for support approved by the research associate deans will be reviewed by the OR&I. The maximum award from OR&I will be $25K and will require a 100% (up to $25K) match from units or colleges. Funds will be available for 18 months.   For more information or to apply, click here. Read more

Funded jointly by the MSU Foundation and MSU colleges, the Strategic Partnership Grants (SPG) Program is an important funding mechanism to support promising new initiatives in key areas of research, scholarship and multidisciplinary collaboration. A successful SPG concept would be of sufficient caliber that it would achieve several of the following aspirations: Create a nexus of national/international research preeminence that will raise the stature of the university, significantly differentiating MSU from its peers. Promote productive and sustained research collaboration and productivity among faculty that, without this funding, would otherwise not occur. Promote work that is high risk, high return, with a potential for high reputational benefit.  Position MSU faculty to compete successfully for significant external funding by creating a path to sustainability of the research endeavor; builds a bridge to a future, not a project that ends at the end of the SPG funding. Promote the development of research ideas with significant (long term) commercial potential and/or broad community or global impact. The SPG program enables such opportunities by supporting research and scholarship that is leading-edge, interdisciplinary, and capitalizes on the existing intellectual and research resources at Michigan State University. The SPG program advances MSU Foundation’s mission to provide grant funding for the development of new knowledge, to lay the groundwork for centers of excellence at the university, and to invest in the development of Michigan State University as one of the nation's leading research institutions. Managed by the Office of Research and Innovation (OR&I), proposals for new and innovative research initiatives are solicited annually in a two-stage review process (preliminary proposals and invited full proposals). Up to five applications will be submitted for review by the MSU Foundation in June of each year.  Eligibility The SPG program is open to multidisciplinary or multi-institutional PI teams comprised of: Full time tenured and tenure-track faculty Faculty with uninterrupted, multi-year, fixed term appointments in academic departments (faculty with visiting or adjunct appointments are not eligible)  Faculty with one-year appointments who obtain written confirmation from their departmental chair that they will be appointed through the duration of the grant (letters from the chair should be attached to the faculty’s CV and uploaded under the PI/Co-PI Information tab).  Academic specialists in the continuing appointment system who have the majority of their effort in the research category (the term "faculty" in this RFP includes these specialists) Click here for more information on the funding opportunity or to apply Read more

Michigan Fellows Agribusiness Initiative (MFAI) a Ugandan-based NGO formed by alumni from MSU/AAP PFP, is seeking partners for a proposed project titled: Emerging community leaders E-course. The project will seek funds from the US Missions Kampala under the funding call. Find the link Here. The E-course content focuses on leadership, project management, civil engagement, and fundraising. Interested persons, organizations, institutions with expertise in these four areas and website designing are urgently needed. Kindly reach out to Raymond by email at raymondakiiki091@gmail.com if you are interested. Kindly note that the deadline for submission is fast approaching which is 20th August 2021. Read more

October 25-26 (Monday-Tuesday), 2021   |   Online / Hybrid   Following the success of the Inaugural “Out of (and Into) Africa” Conference - International Symposium on African Consumer Marketing and Firm Strategies - which was held at the Graves School of Business and Management, Morgan State University, Baltimore in 2018, we are now excited to launch the next edition of the conference with multi-HBCU involvement. Sponsored by: Morgan State University, CIBER-CMCC, and Howard University Paper Submission Deadline Extended to: July 20, 2021 Submit your paper via the Paper Submission Form and register via the Conference Registration Form below. Read more

Call for proposals in East, West, and Southern Africa: Generating and mobilizing knowledge and innovation for early learning Eligibility This call is open to individual African organizations (organizations with independent legal registration in an African country) or consortia of up to three organizations. The applicant organization/lead institution must have legal corporate registration and the capacity to administer foreign funds.  Proposals from consortia must name one lead organization that can subgrant to additional organizations. The lead organization must be a Southern organization with independent legal registration in an African country. Other consortium members may include organizations from within the region; national, regional, or international offices of multilateral organizations or international NGOs; or other organizations from outside the region.  This call is NOT open to individuals, governments, or organizations interested in using this grant to conduct research on the for-profit provision of core education services.  Scope The IDRC, the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and the LEGO Foundation invite proposals from individual organizations, or consortia of organizations, for projects to generate and mobilize knowledge to enable national education systems in developing countries to address challenges associated with two targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). These are targets 4.1 (“By 2030, ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant and effective learning outcomes") and 4.2 (“By 2030, ensure that all boys and girls have access to early childhood development, care and pre-primary education so that they are ready for primary education”). Projects funded through this call will generate and mobilize evidence on how to adapt and scale up approaches that strengthen quality early learning for all children, supporting smooth transitions from pre-primary to primary education.  Projects will build on existing promising or proven approaches that:  adapt and further test the approaches to assess how to scale up positive impact in GPE-member countries; and  mobilize knowledge and strengthen capacity so the approaches can be taken up in policy and practice.   Projects funded through this call will not finance the implementation of the approaches More details Please refer to the detailed call for proposals for more information about the call objectives, eligibility, timelines, selection criteria, review process, application guidelines, and challenge. You are strongly encouraged to read the detailed call for proposals document  before applying. Register for a webinar about this call on June 28, 2021.  Please e-mail your questions in advance to kixcalls@idrc.ca by June 21, 2021.  Please consult the Frequently Asked Questions. Read more

Call for papers for: English Teaching: Practice & Critique   Submission deadline: 15th August 2021 Guest Editors (listed alphabetically by last name):  Denise Dávila Mary M. Juzwik (lead editor) Robert Jean LeBlanc Eric Rackley Loukia K. Sarroub    Overview of special issue  Religion continues to be an important part of global life in the 21st century, as it has been in centuries past. While the Eurocentric “secularization thesis” of the mid 20th century predicted its decline in sociocultural life as nation-states and their economies developed, religion and spirituality have not faded from the global scene. Indeed, they continue to significantly shape (and be shaped by) culture and politics as well as on our focal interests in this special issue -- language, literacy, and schooling. In educational settings around the globe, students today grapple with tensions arising as they navigate academic, social, and spiritual life worlds. Literacy educators also face numerous challenges in understanding and enacting their roles and responsibilities in relation to often-contested terrain surrounding religion, spirituality, and literacies and language/ing in schools. From a scholarly standpoint, understanding and unpacking tensions, underlying assumptions, and influences of the religious in the lives of young people and teachers across diverse educational spaces is becoming increasingly important in today’s interconnected and rapidly changing world. As scholars have begun to turn attention to issues of religion and spirituality, much of the extant work has focused on clearly defined fields of study, on bounded religious communities, and on case studies of individual students. Some of these boundaries are beginning to blur as language and literacy scholars theorize new relationships, examine emergent religious phenomena in relation to literacy, and begin to take more seriously the role of the religious across students’ and teachers’ lives, experiences, communities, geographical locations, etc.  Global in scope, this special issue invites diverse perspectives on religion, literacy, and English education and seeks to invite them into dialogue with each other. While conversations around various intersections of religion, literacy, and English education have provided generative insights for English education and literacy scholarship, this special issue aims to stimulate a broader global dialogue across faiths, disciplines, and communities. We invite papers developing theory, reporting empirical work, narrating pedagogies, and expanding educators’ repertoires of instructional practice. We invite epistemological, ontological, and theological consideration of the religious in relation to language/ing, literacies, and English education. By cultivating a global dialogue about religion, literacy, and English education, this special issue is uniquely situated to generate new understandings across religious and educational traditions from around the world. This special issue aims to create a forum in which stakeholders will wrestle with boundary-crossings among areas of study that hold the promise of reimagined global possibilities in education.  In keeping with our theme, we are particularly interested in contributions from scholars studying religion/literacy/English education in connection with and across locales beyond the United States, including those foregrounding transnational perspectives. Because such work is relatively rare among US-based language and literacy researchers, we also invite papers from scholars working in related fields (e.g., anthropology, linguistics, religious studies, etc.) who take an interest in the intersections of language, literacy, learning, and the religious. We invite manuscripts that address urgent questions and topics related to the new frontiers in religious practice, English, and literacy, including: Religion, spirituality, and English teacher education Digital faith and religious literacy practices Motivations, practices, and ideologies shaping the reading of religious texts English education in schools Preparation of literacy educators with global religious knowledge and understanding Gender, sexuality, and religious literacies Insider/outsider perspectives on conducting research in religious communities Transnationalism and ethno-religious global movements Rising global ethno-nationalism and religious movements and their impact on literacy teaching and learning Historical legacies of Christianity, White Supremacy, and anti-Black racism in relation to literacy education in US contexts Relations among imagined religious communities, literacies, and schooling Conceptions of the ‘good’ in religious literate traditions Tensions in conducting literacy research in and across religious communities Communities troubling or disrupting existing research conceptions of religion and/in literacies Challenges to existing theories of religion and/in literacies Religion and spirituality in relation to  equity issues confronting language, literacy, and English education Emergent religious phenomena in relation to literacy studies Other relevant topics We will consider submission of research papers, practitioner narratives, conceptual/theoretical essays, and creative work pertinent to the theme. Submission Details   Please see the ETPC “Author Guidelines” for guidelines on both kinds of submissions, including word limits: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/etpc#author-guidelines Submissions for this Special Issue must be made through the ScholarOne online submission and peer review system. When submitting your manuscript please ensure the correct special issue title is selected from the drop down menu on page 4 of the submission process: https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/etpc    For questions, contact Dr. Denise Dávila (ddavila@utexas.edu), Dr. Mary Juzwik (mmjuzwik@msu.edu), Dr. Robert LeBlanc (robert.leblanc@uleth.ca), Dr. Eric Rackley (eric.rackley@byuh.edu), or Dr. Loukia Sarroub (lsarroub@unl.edu). Submission deadline: August 15, 2021   Publication date: Approximately June 2022 Read more

JHoK CALL FOR PAPERS by Max Bautista Perpinyà   The Journal for the History of Knowledge is inviting submissions for stand-alone articles.  To find out more about the journal, or to submit your paper, visit www.journalhistoryknowledge.org. You can check author guidelines here: https://journalhistoryknowledge.org/about/submissions/ The Journal for the History of Knowledge is an open access, peer-reviewed journal devoted to the history of knowledge in its broadest sense. This includes the study of science, but also of indigenous, artisanal, and other types of knowledge as well as the history of knowledge developed in the humanities and social sciences. Special attention is paid to interactions and processes of demarcation between science and other forms of knowledge. Contributions may deal with the history of concepts of knowledge, the study of knowledge making practices and institutions and sites of knowledge production, adjudication, and legitimation (including universities). Contributions which highlight the relevance of the history of knowledge to current policy concerns (for example, by historicizing and problematizing concepts such as the "knowledge society") are particularly welcome.   JHoK is affiliated with Gewina, the Belgian-Dutch Society for History of Science and Universities. It is supported by the Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, the Huygens Institute of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Vossius Centre for the History of Humanities and Sciences, and the Stevin Centre for History of Science and Humanities.  Read more