The inaugural workshop will introduce the HUMA Research & Grants Development Hub by critically reflecting on the humanities as a particular intellectual project and working with participants to build their intellectual projects that centre both the humanities and Africa as a location for scientific work.

Defining an intellectual project is vital for the scientific identity, research work, publications, teaching, supervision, community engagement and leadership of scholars. Increasingly scholars are finding it difficult to formulate, articulate and assert their ideas within a coherent and legible framework that allows for long-term engagement and visibility. In a world of metrics and a context of knowledge rethinking, scholars need to find space, ways and frameworks to hold their ideas, keep voice and participate in a global knowledge community. Because of the rush and necessity to publish at all costs, many emerging researchers perish or struggle to emerge because of serious neglect in carefully delineating ideascapes, building around concepts and thinking around a body of work that enables them to – on the one hand, ask specific questions, and on the other hand make particular arguments that define their contribution to knowledge.

The first workshop will support participants in defining their current and future research focus and how to connect this to their own personal histories and community/communal biographies.

Programme

Day 1

  • Centring humanities as intellectual project
  • Conceptualising an intellectual project

Day 2

  • Developing the intellectual project
  • The grant development programme

Day 3

  • Firming-up the intellectual project
  • End of workshop

Format: The 2.5 days workshop will be held through an intensive in-person retreat, with group work, peer conversations and reporting back. At the end of the workshop, participants will leave with a clearly defined intellectual project to develop further through the research hub programmes, where they will participate as fellows.

Eligibility: Permanent or contract academic/research staff in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Cape Town (UCT). Researchers outside the Humanities Faculty at UCT who centre the humanities as analytical framework are also encouraged to participate.

About the Hub: The HUMA Research & Grants Development Hub aims to develop research and support researchers in the Humanities to advance their research; enhance their ability to secure, manage, administer, and report on funded research; and research visibility. As part of HUMA’s mission, the Hub aims to promote interdisciplinary encounters and cross-border collaborations that centre the humanities and Africa as a lens to critically interrogate the human.