SFG NETWORK'S PROJECTS - LOCALLY AND GLOBALLY SITUATED

Over the last six years, each hub has developed projects to address some of the development challenges expressed by the local communities with which they work. Within each hub or across hubs, interdisciplinary teams explore ways of engagement and co-build research agendas with the communities and relevant stakeholders to ensure strong impacts.

GERMANY HUB

Transdisciplinary online course - Resources & Sustainability

Friedrich Alexander (FAU) University Erlangen/Nuremberg (Germany) and the University of Eswatini (Eswatini) as well as the University of Glasgow (United Kingdom) and Makerere University (Uganda) are jointly developing trans-disciplinary, interconnected learning modules for a postgraduate course based on virtual collaboration during design, implementation and within the actual course.

The final aims are to enhance digital and inter-cultural skills including geological knowledge about the countries’ resources under the aspect of sustainability across the cultures of tutors and students, with a truly global virtual perspective and to develop a best-practice case for the wider community.

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SCOTLAND HUB

Sustainable Futures in Writing

Nurturing new voices in interdisciplinary sustainability research.

This project, funded by the British Academy, is facilitating the publication of research outputs by a cohort of dynamic international sustainability researchers from the arts & humanities and social sciences by providing one-to-one editorial support, group sessions and networking opportunities. Through workshops and mentoring, writers are developing confidence in structuring and submitting work so that they can move into lead authorship positions and share their findings and ideas with wider communities.

You can read more about the Sustainable Futures in Writing cohort members and their exciting and original projects in the blog posts when following the link.

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BOTSWANA HUB

Wildlife-Human Interactions

The Botswana team explores the issue of human-wildlife interaction. This is a topical issue that affects local development like grassroots livelihood, the tourism industry, food production and wildlife management. It also has an international dimension as wildlife moves in and out of the country. Botswana team is looking into ways of managing the interactions, especially, the elephant-human interaction.

Through Kgotla meetings, the team were able to identify potential mitigation measures (e.g. Community Based Natural Resource Management and the use of chilli pepper).

The team now builds upon these identified measure and works with the Mmadinare community to further develop opportunities linked to this challenge.

MALAWI HUB

Drones and communities

In Malawi, climate change, the ongoing impacts of British colonialism on economic and political geographies, and cross-border tensions in East Africa have intersected to produce a series of crises for predominantly communities. Working with Dr. Moyo (LUANAR), the NGO Abundance, and Kei Otsuki (Utrecht University) GES researchers Deborah Dixon, Phil Nicholson, and Brian Barrett developed a project on ‘Visualising Geoviolence’ that aims to map out how this complex intersection of physical and social factors emerges over time and space, how it is experienced as a form of violence upon individual bodies and community infrastructures, and how it is negotiated and responded to. The project focused on areas such as Lake Chilwa where irrigation, fertilisers, sand mining and reed-bed removal have profoundly impacted the now shallow, saline lake.

NIGERIA HUB

Challenges for mining communities

There is a growing commitment from both the public and private sectors to diversify the Nigerian economy consequent upon which attention is now being paid to the agricultural and mineral resources sectors. The government has recently taken steps to revive the agricultural and mining sectors.

Mining (large scale) was typically conducted in the Northern part of the country, and the skewness of licensed miners, in favour of the northern part, inadvertently promoted artisanal mining in the biodiversity-rich and ecologically-diverse south-western part of the country.

The government’s attention to the exploitation of natural resources has not been matched with equal attention to the development of the host communities, leading to cultural and ecological loses. This is against this background that the Nigerian team is exploring new ways of stakeholders’ engagement to address community development issues in Oyo and Osun States.

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UGANDA HUB

"No-Method" Methodology

The Ugandan hub explores the different ways in which the local people of Kibanjwa Hoima and Apala-Abia in Alebtong district use the natural resources around them in their bid for development and the betterment of their livelihoods and what steps they are taking in order to avoid compromising the natural environment’s ability to serve future generation.

They employ a number of approaches that can be closely approximated to commonly known methods such as transect walk, home visits, community forums, and focus group discussions as well as interviews with the local leaders. Aspects of these methods are applied as deemed fit to the prevailing circumstances, in the quest to come up with a unique methodology for researching communities in a more effective way through community-oriented ideas: The No-Method Methodology.

SCOTLAND HUB

Participatory Futures

The Participatory Futures project addresses the challenge of Equitable Access to Sustainable Development as identified by the UKRI GCRF strategy, and the Sustainable Development Goal 17 (Partnerships for the Goals) as an essential component of this issue. This goal is gravely underrepresented in development-related research and yet critically underpins and determines the impact and sustainability of outcomes. This project seeks to re-examine 5 GCRF projects to evaluate the way partnerships have been conceptualised and practiced across diverse research contexts.

The project spans Ethiopia, Uganda, Botswana, Kenya, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania and Scotland.

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SFA Network

Whose Crisis?

Project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) under the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) – Whose crisis? The global COVID-19 crisis from the perspective of communities in Africa.

The overarching aim of the project, which runs for one year from September 2020, is to amplify the voices of under-represented and under-served communities in Africa to contribute to the understanding of Global Health in a pandemic context. It will be achieved through two main objectives:

  1. To document and communicate the plural and diverse lived experiences of, perspectives on, and responses to, COVID-19 in vulnerable communities in sub-Saharan Africa at a community and household level.
  2. To share perspectives and experiences in participatory and culturally responsive ways to mobilise Northern and Southern expertise, resources and engagement.
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SCOTLAND HUB

Kitchen Life Project

The Kitchen Life Project is an interdisciplinary research pilot on sustainable cooking as it relates to energy, air pollution, and nutrition in two regions in Africa and Asia. Taking the ‘kitchen’ as the unit of analysis, three interlinked aspects will be investigated: everyday cooking practices, cooking economy and cooking materials.  A cultural understanding of everyday kitchen life in Bangladesh and Malawi will contribute essential and often overlooked insights to the related fields of energy, sustainability, and health.

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