Admission requirements
The course is compulsory for students in MA African Studies and open to others after consultations with the instructors.
Description
*Aim *
This course aims to enable students to get exposed to empirical field research and explore and gain practical experience with a range of qualitative and quantitative research methods and techniques in the field of African Studies. The world is increasingly digitizing and virtualizing, which influences the social-economic and political dynamics we study in Africa African Studies and influences our research practice. In this course, students gain practical experience with methods and techniques that have been used ‘offline’ since long, while getting acquainted with digital and visual extensions and innovations of these methods and techniques through digital means.
*What *
Students will gain practical experience through a ‘field assignment’, and reflect upon the various methods and techniques they may employ through readings and discussions in class. Students are expected to experiment with and deepen their understanding of various methods and techniques in African Studies, prioritizing those methods and techniques they wish or expect to be using in their own embedded field research in block III. Moreover, in this course they are stimulated to give specific attention to digital and visual techniques. To learn new techniques, they are invited to follow workshop in the media laboratory of digital humanities. (The lab offers workshops on the necessary skills. This way they will learn about and work with a variety of digital and visual techniques for their data collection, analysis and presentation of findings.)
*How *
Students will work in small groups on a collaborative research assignment ‘Africa in the Netherlands’ (in groups of 3 to 4 person), in which they employ a variety of methods and techniques of their choice. Data collection for the project will be executed in Leiden/The Hague/Amsterdam and/or online. The collaborative work will be documented in a collaborative end product (e.g. web publication) and orally presented to the group at the end of the course, while students will also write a reflective paper on their individual contributions to the group project, reflecting on the choices of methods and collaboration, the process, and the ethics and emotions involved in the research and presentation, and what lessons or insights they hope to take with them to their embedded research assignment.
The course consists of 3 seminars of 3 hours and one seminar of 4 hours. The seminars follow a teaching method known as student-led-learning, i.e. we use the questions and experiences of students regarding their projects as starting points in class. The 4-hour seminar is dedicated to the presentation of the group projects.
*Relation to program *
The course builds on the theoretical discussions about methods and methodology introduced in the course Researching Africa in the 21st century and feeds into their preparations for an embedded research in the second bloc. Workshops in the Media Lab that students African Studies can follow, can be used to strengthen and bring into practice insights and presentation.
Course objectives
The following course objectives are central to this course:
- Students will have gained theoretical and experiential knowledge of a range of qualitative and quantitative methods and techniques – including their digital and visual extensions – current in researcg in African Studies, particularly as used within the disciplines of Linguistics, Culture Studies, Anthropology, Geography, Political Science, History or Economics in relation to African Studies.
- The students will have learned to collaborate in a group to develop and carry out a research project;
- Students will have the technical and cognitive skills to select and employ relevant research methods and techniques to collect, analyse and critically evaluate research data.
- Students have gained experience with taking into account social and cultural, academic and ethical aspects relevant to the collection and presentation of findings and the formulation of conclusions and judgements.
- Students will have obtained the skills to clearly communicate and report the outcomes based on their analysed research findings in an oral presentation as well as in a documented form, using written, oral and/or visual format suitable for publication on an academic website.
Timetable
The timetables are avalable through My Timetable.
Mode of instruction
Seminar
Research (data collection)
Assessment method
The final mark for the coure is established by determining the weighted average.
Assessment and weighing
Collaborative end product (50%)
Oral presentation (group) (25%)
Reflective Paper/ digital end product (individual) (25%)
Resit
Resits are possible only for the (individual) paper. A resit is not possible if a numerical grade for this exam component is 6.0 or above.
Inspection and feedback
How and when an exam review will take place will be disclosed together with the publication of the exam results at the latest. If a student requests a review within 30 days after publication of the exam results, an exam review will have to be organized.
Reading list
The readings for this course will be indicated in the syllabus, which will be published on Brightspace at least two weeks before the course starts.
Registration
Enrolment through MyStudyMap is mandatory.
Registration Studeren à la carte en Contractonderwijs
Registration Studeren à la carte.
Registration Contractonderwijs.
Contact
For substantive questions, contact the lecturer listed in the right information bar.
For questions about enrolment, admission, etc, contact the Education Administration Office: Reuvensplaats