Perivoli Africa Research Centre and Partners Fund for African Researchers

The Perivoli Africa Research Centre (PARC) is open to applications from Africa-based researchers at African institutions to lead Africa-centred projects in collaboration with colleagues at the University of Bristol.

This call aims to support and help embed research collaborations that build on ideas of African scholars and institutions about what fairer, transformed partnership arrangements should look like. As such the call is open to any Africa-led project that addresses any basic or applied aims prioritized by the African applicant, and that is conducted in collaboration with researchers at Bristol.

However, research areas may be empirical or theoretical, from any discipline, and related to local and/or national, sub-regional or continental, African Union aspirations for social progress.

In parallel, evolving African perspectives on the imperative of decolonizing higher education and research are focusing attention on other interrelated power imbalances that often manifest in global North-Africa partnerships and require redress. Among others, and occurring variously across the different subject areas, these include:

• The frequent requirement of identifying research foci within the frame of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which may precludes inquiry on other African priorities not captured in this global framework.
• A typically uni-directional development and research ‘gaze’, which posits the global North as ‘developed’ or advanced and Africa as ‘developing’. The gaze typically implies global North involvement in research to aid the continent, and forecloses bi-directional investigations of common or comparable development challenges or even a reversed South to North investigation of Northern challenges.
• Vast disparities in infrastructures and resources required for research.
• A dominant use of Western epistemologies, theories and concepts to guide the collection and the interpretation of data, with little value given to existing African knowledge systems and theoretical perspectives or explicit new theorizing from the continent.

Duration: The Perivoli Africa research funding will be for a period of 12 months.

Benefits: £200,000

Eligibility

The Perivoli Africa research fund requires that:

• The core team should consist of an African researcher based at an African HEI or research institution as lead and at least one Bristol researcher.
• The Bristol researchers can be either experienced researchers (over seven years post-PhD) or early career researchers (e.g. postgraduate up to within 7 years post-PhD).

Application Process

In applying for the Perivoli Africa Research Centre (PARC), applicants must include plans for the submission of at least one academic publication and must include a learning aspect focused on deriving lessons from their Africa-centred collaboration modes and on sharing these, through active contributions, with the PARC Community of Interest.

Deadline: January 07, 2022.

For more information on the Perivoli Africa research fund, visit the official site.