JMU faculty partner with African universities through a fellowship

Three JMU faculty members received support from the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program to partner with African higher education institutions. Amina Saidou (Foreign Languages, Literatures, and Cultures) will collaborate with Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar, Senegal, to design and teach innovative courses on African cinema. Sombo Muzata (Political Science) will continue her partnership with the University of Pretoria, South Africa on research examining the links between public debt, corruption and illicit financial flows. Modjadji Choshi (Nursing, College of Health and Behavioral Studies) will work with the University of South Africa to provide an intensive two-week workshop for graduate students and junior faculty on research design and methodology.

CADFP supports partnerships between African-born academics living in the United States or Canada and accredited African universities to carry out research collaborations, graduate student teaching/mentoring and/or curriculum co-development. CADFP is funded by a grant from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and administered by the Institute of International Education.

Saidou is working with Papa Malick Ba, a professor at CADU, on a project titled “Engaging the Senegalese Youth in Cinema through the Power of Artificial Intelligence.” Saidou and Ba will co-teach courses on African cinema that cover topics like women in African cinema, the contemporary landscape of African cinema and teaching African cultures through film. They will also co-organize a workshop that will strengthen collaboration between JMU and CADU through online teaching, the exchange of guest speakers and the development of a future study abroad program.

Muzata received an alumni CADFP award to continue her collaboration with Christopher Nshimbi, a professor of political science and the director of the Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation at UP. Their project is entitled “Collaborative Research in Public Debt, Corruption and Illicit Financial Flows.” In addition to continuing their research, Muzata and Nshimbi will also organize a class with support from JMU’s X-Labs and a transdisciplinary team of scholars at UP that brings together students from the two universities to address contemporary social issues in South Africa and the United States.

Choshi seeks to address global imbalances in knowledge production by partnering with the University of South Africa to strengthen scholarship capacity. Through her project, “Online Larning Capacity Strengthening and Research: Mentoring the Next Generation of Scientists,” she will help graduate students and junior faculty acquire, strengthen and enhance the skills necessary to undertake research effectively and efficiently.