Short Abstract:

In this workshop we want to explore to what extent research cooperations between Global South and Global North countries deal with the challenges of asymmetrical collaborations and seeking out new ways for joint partnerships and common knowledge production.

Long Abstract:

Collaboration in science and research is a field that is receiving increasing attention. In particular, the unequal preconditions for research and the asymmetrical conditions of funding, research and publication is subject to strong criticism. While institutions in the Global North often finance large projects and are endowed with immense budgets, the funding landscape in the Global South is more limited.

Sometimes, the funding requirements are bizarre. While research projects from the Global North are reliant on strong collaborations with scientists from the Global South, it is often either impossible or difficult to adequately employ these scientists in these projects.

We would like to look at individual and collective approaches to overcome imbalances (knowledge, power, funding, etc.) in the context of south-north cooperations, and discuss your ideas about necessary and possible structural reforms. Therefore, we invite a multitude of voices (senior researchers, emerging scholars, administrators as well as practitioners from African and German academia) to share your experiences and visions, and reflect critically on established African-German research cooperations. Hereby, we are not only interested to present the ‘success stories’ of good partnership, but would likewise like to learn from the challenges and failures of joint partnership, attempted commoning, as well as stories of resistance and uncommoning.

Finally, we want to extend our discussion towards the conditions of common knowledge production, the practices and ideas of common research, and the im/possibility of commoning international research projects.

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