The aim of this meeting is to showcase some of the active and collaborative projects between our university and African research institutes to an interdisciplinary audience, to exchange experiences and develop and strengthen further interactions. The following are some of the concrete objectives the event plans to achieve: 

• Create visibility for research and educational projects connected to Africa in our institution.
• Discuss opportunities and challenges in collaborations with African partners reflecting on the experiences of scientists coming from different fields. What do we need in order to establish stronger partnerships with African institutions?
• Gather an interdisciplinary audience and plant a seed for an active network of people across different faculties and institutes. We would like to move from scattered individual initiatives to a more coordinated and structural framework leading to long-lasting research collaborations, institutional partnerships and more student mobility.
• Reflect on best practises and challenges, including ethical aspects of reciprocity and power dynamics.

Throughout the day, the plan includes (1) short talks from UvA scientists, who will discuss their experience on different initiatives and activities in collaborations with African partners; (2) keynote lectures from prominent African scientist, who will bring the African perspective at the table. We would like to invite our speakers to give us an account of their experience and reflect on what they see as main opportunities and main obstacles in establishing long-lasting collaborations with institutions, like the University of Amsterdam; (3) Interactive brainstorming sessions; (4) Informal networking moments.

Programme

TBA

About the speakers

• Professor Moustapha Fall, the center president of the African Institute Mathematical Sciences in Senegal.
• Dr Teckla Angelo, senior research scientist at the National Institute of Medical Research Mwanza Center and the Nelson Mandela African Institute of Science and Technology, in Tanzania.
• Professor James Chibueze, Professor in Astronomy at the University of South Africa.
• Dr Naomi Asabre Frimpong, Vice-President of the African Astronomical Society, Research Scientist at the Ghana Space Science and Technology Institute
• Dr Fathiya M. Khamis, Senior Scientist at the International Center of Insect Physiology and Ecology, Nairobi, Kenya.

About the organizers 

Diletta Martinelli is an assistant professor in the Mathematics Institute at the UvA, and she serves as coordinator of academic collaborations with the Global South for the Faculty of Science. She is involved in a varieties of projects connected to research capacity building in the mathematical sciences.

Co-organizers for this event are:

• Professor Sera Markoff (Astronomy), current coPI of the ERC Synergy Grant “BlackHolistic” to better understand black holes of all scales, including building a new telescope in Namibia in partnership with the University of Namibia;
• Professor Astrid Groot (Biology), evolutionary biologist, mostly focused on Lepidopteran pest insects, in which she investigates the evolution of sexual communication and how this affects speciation. She has several join projects in collaborations with partners in Benin and Kenya.

About UvA colleagues Involved

• Nichy Pouw, Governance and Inclusive Development. She will speak about her involvement with the Include Platform that bridges between science and policy in Africa and the Netherlands.
• Joyeeta Gupta, Environment and Development in the Global South. She has agreed to speak about the GROW project and, more in general, about her work on environment and development in the Global South.
• Esther Miedema, Social and Behavioural Sciences. She has agreed to talk about the Alternative2Extractivism project.

This is an invitational event.