Trilateral Initiatives in Emerging Regions Grant Recipients

New Approaches to the Study of Urban Africa: a Master Class

Description

Masterclass “New Approaches to the Study of Urban Africa” is part of the larger proposed Alliance joint project, “Infrastructures, Technologies and Time in African Cities.” It represents the beginning of a trilateral collaboration between the Institute of African Studies (IAS) at Columbia, Center for International Studies and Research (CERI) at Sciences Po, and Institut Français de Recherche en Afrique (IFRA) at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria. It supports an eight-day intensive collaborative masterclass at the University of Ibadan (UI) taught by a team of faculty from CU, Sciences Po, and UI on the following topics: social science and humanities methodologies in urban studies, theorizing urban Africa, a history of urban Africa, citizenship and the urban environment. Two shorter workshops on academic publishing and mapping and statistical analyses will accompany the series. The class will include students from UI, CU, and Sciences Po and will provide hands-on experience in conducting ethnographic and archival research. Participants will be encouraged to attend a three day conference “Lagos: From the Pepperfarm to the Megacity (and Beyond)” to be held at the University of Lagos, June 16-17, 2017 organized by IAS affiliated faculty and project participant, Prof. Abosede George (History, Barnard/CU). This project further seeks to facilitate collaborative research projects that bring French, Nigerian, and American scholars together on shared publications and conferences, including funding to support two Nigerian scholars travel to joint conferences at Sciences Po and CU (as part of the proposed Alliance joint project on Infrastructures).

The impacts of the implementation of real-time information service on households’ consumption practices in Indian cities: The analogy between water and electricity supply services in Bangalore

Description

The Management Research Centre of the Ecole Polytechnique, The Columbia Water Centre and the Indian Institute of Science are partnering in a field research project aiming at understanding the growing demand for frugal information based services from Indian public utilities to circumvent the unreliability of their urban water and electricity supply systems.

The research focuses on the development in Bangalore of partial service upgrade experiments in the provision of these basic services, through the use of information technology.

Studying these initiatives has a strong relevance from both managerial and socio-economic perspectives. It will enrich our understanding on two interrelated issues:
1. The role of the ground level workers in the production of that real-time information
service through an in-depth study of the activity the valvemen of NextDrop (for water) and the linemen of Bescom (for electricity);
2. The willingness of the end-users to utilize these information services and their impacts at households’ water and electricity consumption practices.
The realization of this project requires adopting a multidisciplinary perspective mobilizing various fields (ex. political economy, public management, and information

Life History and Memographie: Encountering socio-religious change in Northwest Africa

Description

This project brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars, researchers, and graduate students to workshop methodologies and theoretical approaches for understanding socio-religious change in Northwest Africa. This workshop brings together the Institute for Religion, Culture, and Public Life’s (IRCPL) project, “Life History in Northwest Africa: Everyday Life, Historical Memory, and the Public Square,” with the “Mémographie” project at the Laboratoire d’Analyse des Sociétés et Pouvoirs / Afrique-Diasporas (LASPAD) at the University of Gaston Berger in Saint-Louis, Senegal, and puts both of these projects in conversation with French Academics based at Sciences Po.

Innovative Sensors and Light sources for Biomedical Applications

This project aims at identifying and optimizing unconventional sensors and light sources for point-of-care detection, advanced mobile healthcare, and implantable medical technologies. While the emergence of new electronic materials with mechanical flexibility, biocompatibility, and multi-functionality has been a key driver behind recent diagnosis and treatment tools, there is still a lack of fundamental understanding on how to design better-performing devices in a more predictable way. The three investigators of the project will combine their established research strengths on nanotechnology, thin-film electronics, and materials science to build a clearer vision of the fully conformable, highly energy-efficient, and significantly downsized application-ready biochips that are capable of bi-directional stimulation and recording of vital signals
at a high spatial and temporal resolution

A Holistic Approach to Social & Life Course Change in China

It is thought that Chinese patterns of family formation, education and employment careers, and migration behaviour have changed dramatically in the course of a century of massive structural, political, and cultural transformations. However, how and why the family, employment, and residential lives of Chinese men and women changed is not yet systemically understood. The overarching aim of this trilateral initiative is to advance the theoretical and methodological capacities of scholars to take a holistic approach to social and life course change in China. This project brings together students and faculty from Columbia University, Sciences Po, Peking University, and the University of Oxford to prepare open source multifaceted life history data, provide theoretical and methodological training in holistic life course sociology and data analysis, and produce new findings on family, employment, and residential life courses in China.

Ethnographies of African Work Worlds

Ethnographies of African Work Worlds is a year-long project that brings scholars from the United States, France, and Africa together to examine the changing nature of work and labor in contemporary Africa. Work and labor are not just crucial topics in African studies but are the topics around which African studies has been constructed and organized. Recent years, however, have seen the emergence of a slew of new forms of work – in cultural industries, digital start-ups, privatized transport systems – that are transforming both the nature of work for contemporary Africans and the ways scholars have conceived of and analyzed labor. At the same time, precarious forms of work or what might be designated as not work continue to expand in number. This project seeks to bring scholars together to: A) understand emerging forms of work that do not quite fit into existing conceptual categories and B) re-examine how scholars, intellectuals and policy makers analytically conceive of work and its operations in contemporary Africa.

Rewriting the French and US Constitutions: Looking Beyond the Usual Suspects

The research project Rewriting the French and US Constitutions: looking beyond the "usual suspects" aims to delve into enduring constitutional challenges within French and US constitutionalism. Partnering with the University of Colombo Sri Lanka, the transatlantic endeavor involves inviting scholars from the Global South to experimentally rewrite specific provisions of these constitutions. Rooted in the belief that legal scholars often operate within a limited mental universe, constraining conceivable constitutional changes, the project strives to broaden perspectives and challenge the dominance of Western conceptions in comparative constitutional law. Employing a methodology based on legal pluriversality, it draws on the experiences of Global South jurisdictions to inform constitutional challenges. Despite potential criticisms related to traditional constitutional concepts, the project promotes the idea of 'reverse legal transplants,' bringing diverse voices into the constitutional discourse. The innovative approach involves collaboration with legal experts from constitutionally marginalized countries and tests the concept of reverse legal transplants, offering a unique contribution to the fields of constitutional law and legal academia. The objectives of the project extend beyond academic discourse. It aims to revitalize public discussions on enduring constitutional issues in France and the US by integrating international experts not typically included in such deliberations. It also prepares the terrain for the creation of a joint seminar between the three partner institutions, putting together a shared open access syllabus on "Constitutional Challenges in the Global Context". 

The African Humanities Project

The African Humanities Project (AHP) is an innovative initiative that represents a groundbreaking collaboration between Columbia University, Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, and Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne University. The project is centered around the reinterpretation and recontextualization of the humanities through an African lens, challenging the traditional confines of humanism and promoting a more inclusive, globally-oriented perspective. Through a series of workshops and educational initiatives, the AHP aims to develop a robust African humanities curriculum that engages with the historical, philosophical, and cultural dimensions of African intellectual traditions.
The project underscores the importance of African perspectives in addressing fundamental questions of humanism and humanity, leveraging historical, linguistic, and cultural insights to enrich and expand the humanities. The collaboration fosters a dynamic intercultural dialogue that bridges American, North African, and European academic environments, emphasizing mutual learning and partnership. By integrating African viewpoints into humanities education and research, the AHP seeks to contribute significantly to global scholarship and foster a deeper understanding of Africa's intellectual heritage and its relevance to contemporary global issues. The initiative is structured around three key workshops, each focusing on different thematic and geographic intersections of African humanities. These workshops will not only facilitate scholarly exchange and exploration but also lay the groundwork for a comprehensive curriculum that can be adopted at various educational levels. By reimagining humanities education through an African prism, the AHP aspires to cultivate a more nuanced, inclusive, and interconnected understanding of humanistic studies, thereby enriching the academic landscape and fostering a deeper appreciation of the diversity and complexity of human knowledge and experience.

Madagascar in the World: Inheritances and Uncertain Futures

This major international conference gathers scholars of Madagascar to reflect on the complex and dynamic challenges that confront the island and its people. The conference situates Madagascar in the contemporary world and explores the legacies and uncertain futures that people of the island face today. Pressing challenges include drought and famine in the south of the island; the greater intensity and frequency of cyclones in the western Indian Ocean; and heightened insecurity following the financial crisis of 2008, and the challenges of the Covid19 pandemic. These are amplified by the difficulties encountered by political institutions in responding to these changes and by other social and economic issues, including demographic expansion, environmental degradation, and inter-regional migration.
To understand these contemporary issues, a multidisciplinary and international dialogue is required, bringing together political scientists, economists and ecologists with historians, archaeologists and anthropologists, who can offer a perspective on long term historical and socio-cultural processes. Our aim is to better understand the logics that underpin community and political responses to the contemporary challenges facing Madagascar and to better grasp the constraints and legacies that affect how solutions are imagined and implemented. This conference will not only bring together a wide range of researchers working on Madagascar in the humanities and social sciences, but will build and sustain a network and community of researchers across Madagascar, Europe and North America. We anticipate that this conference will lay the foundation for future trilateral initiatives and collaborations between participants.