Research stays from Kenya and Ghana

When I came here, I was full of full of expectations”, Peter Bembir, a PhD candidate from the University of Ghana explained but added, that he had some trepidations as well. “We’re here now but how much am I going to get done?” A lot it turned out.

Peter Bembir has been part of a three-months research stay at DIIS with four other PhD candidates:  two Ghanaian colleagues, Eva Dzegblor and Mustapha Abdallah, also from Institute of African Studies, University of Ghana, and Fatima Dahir and Abdirahman Edle from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS), University of Nairobi. They were joined by Karuti Kanyinga, Research Professor and Director of IDS, University of Nairobi, and Kwesi Aning, Professor and Director of Research at the Kofi Annan International Peacekeeping Institute, Accra.

Our guests’ visit was undertaken as part of two collaborative research projects: the D-SIP research project on domestic security implications of Ghanaian international peacekeeping missions and the D-HUM research project on the mobilization, channeling, delivery and effects of diaspora humanitarian support in Somali East Africa. Their research stays had been a long time in the making, being postponed no less than three times because of Covid-19. Finally, they made it to Copenhagen in the middle of August, going through an intense range of activities.

In the beginning of September, we organized the PhD course ‘Thinking Through Im/Mobility’ a DIIS-University of Copenhagen joint event with 16 PhD candidates from all over Scandinavia as well as Kenya, Ghana, and Ethiopia. A brown bag lunch at DIIS on the situation in Kenya and Somalia followed as well as a closed seminar on the challenges and inequalities of north-south research collaboration. Finally, in late September, we organized a Master Class on ‘Doing Research Well’ in Copenhagen and on Bornholm where Professor Karuti Kanyinga and Professor Kwesi Aning gave detailed feedback to our PhD candidates for three intense days, along with the coordinators of the two projects, Peter Albrecht and Nauja Kleist.

Just before flying back to Accra and Nairobi, Nauja asked the PhD candidates to reflect upon their experiences in Copenhagen. In the words of Fatima: “I had just started my PhD project and then Covid-19 happened … our visit is the most real, the PhD has been to me. It was a once in a lifetime experience, especially the workshop in Bornholm”. Abdirahman explained how interacting with his fellow Ghanaian, African and European PhD students at PhD courses was an eye-opening experience. “We thought that the challenges we had were unique, but they affect all of us”, he said, while Eva especially enjoyed the group breakouts in the PhD course. “It was very instructive. Especially when we had to present each other’s papers rather than our own, it taught me to move forward. I’m not only writing for myself but also for others.”

When asked what they were looking most forward to back home, all five explained that they were eager to translate what they have learnt into practice. As Mustapha said, “how to develop theory and how to apply it to the field”. And to see their families of course, they all emphasized. Not least, Peter, who became a father to a little son during his stay in Copenhagen.