Paper short abstract:

We reflect on a recent teaching project in which students and lecturers from Switzerland and Ghana jointly explored the heritage of the Basel Mission in Ghana, Switzerland, and Germany. Based on these experiences, we propose guidelines for collaborative teaching and student research partnerships.

Paper long abstract:

Our paper explores questions of north-south partnerships with regard to teaching. While there have been fruitful initiatives concerning collaboration in research, questions of teaching have received less attention. In our presentation, we reflect upon a collaborative teaching project on the heritage of the Basel Mission (BM) in southern Ghana and northwestern Switzerland/southwestern Germany. Based on our experiences as instructors, we propose guidelines for collaborative and reciprocal student research.

The Basel Mission, founded in 1815, developed into one of the largest German-speaking missions. Ghana was one of the first countries to which Basel missionaries were sent. In the BM's former places of work in southern Ghana, the traces of the mission are still omnipresent, in the form of schools and hospitals, cemeteries, churches, former homes of the missionaries and plantations. In Switzerland and Germany, this heritage includes the BM archive in Basel as well as local museums and memorials. Moreover, the BM features centrally in in family histories and religious self-identifications in all three countries.

From September 2023 to July 2024, students and lecturers from Switzerland (University of Basel) and from Ghana (University of Ghana; Akrofi-Christaller-Institute) explored this heritage in two hybrid seminars and ensuing excursions, during which students visited churches, schools, hospitals, and missionary homes, carried out research in archives and conducted oral history interviews. Based on these experiences, we reflect on questions of reciprocity with regard to funding, the recruitment and needs of students, research priorities, religious sensibilities, and different understandings of what it means to “decolonize” culture.