Kampala – Doctorate scholars from a host of Ugandan Universities are locked up in a five-day international workshop at Muteesa I Royal University to improve their academic writing skills and make their research relevant to national development.
The workshop started on Monday February 8, 2021 at the campus premises in Mengo, Kampala, drawing students and early career researchers from various universities in Uganda and Zambia. The event is also the first ever interuniversity Co-Creation workshop on academic writing for PhD students and early career researchers in Uganda.
Run by the Interuniversity Research and Innovation Community for the Early Career Researchers in Uganda (IRIC-ECRU) project, the workshop is being facilitated by both local and international senior scholars from Uganda and the United Kingdom.
“Most PhD students and early career researchers find writing the dissertation and other works relating to their research challenging. This is the reason we are here for the first time,” noted Dr. Loyce Natukunda, the Managing Director of the Network for Education and Multidisciplinary Research Africa (NEMRA).
And, although universities offer training in this area, Dr. Natukunda says the IRIC-ECRU will offer the participants an opportunity for interuniversity interaction in the process of developing writing skills.
“A PhD Programme, and indeed writing, can be a very lonely journey making networking with others essential,” she added.
IRIC-ECRU is the project of the Network for Education and Multidisciplinary Research Africa (NEMRA) which is an independent inter-institutional network of academics, postgraduate research students and practitioners. The network was established to facilitate individual, interuniversity and institutions collaboration on education and research within Africa. NEMRA is intended to bring together and build a generation of researchers advancing new and relevant approaches in researcher development processes, research, dissemination, engagement and impact to accelerate the Uganda’s R&I agenda.
As such, PhD students and ECRs are mobilized from across universities, empowered through the capacity building activities, engaged in joint research endeavors and facilitated to disseminate their research outputs for impact.
The five day workshop was opened by Prof. Vincent Kakembo, the Vice Chancellor of MRU and Prof. Stella Neema, the Chairperson Board of Directors NEMRA and the Principle Investigator of IRIC-ECRU, Assoc. Prof. Godfrey Asiimwe of Makerere University.
Participants will share and learn about Creativity in Research, Identifying and articulating research topics Developing effective writing habits, Writing a literature review.
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