Professor Phil Clark publishes article on raising the global profile of Rwandan researchers
27 May 2022
Professor Phil Clark (along with colleagues Felix Ndahinda, Sandra Shenge, Jason Mosley and Nicola Palmer) has published an article in The Conversation entitled, "Rwandan Researchers are Finally Being Centred in Scholarship about Their Own Country".
The article discusses the Research, Policy and Higher Education (RPHE) programme that Professor Clark, along with Rwandan and international colleagues, established through the Aegis Trust in Kigali in 2014. The programme provides research funding, training and mentorship to Rwandan researchers, with support from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and the British Academy.
The RPHE adopts a rigorous process. The authors supported by the programme first produce working papers and policy briefs. These are honed through discussions with their programme colleagues and at public events in Kigali and London. Only then are they submitted to peer-reviewed journals.
The RPHE authors to date have published 21 journal articles and book chapters, accessible on the Genocide Research Hub.
To put this substantial body of work in context, the RPHE leadership found that between 1994 and 2019, of the 398 articles published on Rwanda in 12 leading journals, only 13 - a mere 3.3% - were by Rwandan authors or co-authors.
In 2019, one of the authors on the RPHE programme, Assumpta Mugiraneza (with Benjamin Chemouni), published the first-ever article by a Rwandan in the flagship area studies journal African Affairs.
Professor Clark and the RPHE team continue to work closely with a competitively selected group of Rwandan researchers and run events in Kigali supporting the wider Rwandan research community.
Their piece in The Conversation closes by saying, “The highly talented Rwandan social science research community is beginning to gain the global platform it deserves. This shift is vital for Rwandan researchers. It benefits others, too, by producing fresh insights and challenging the structures that for years stymied these critical voices. More initiatives of this kind are essential if calls to decolonise knowledge are to become more than comforting blandishments.”