In September 2011, IFRA-Nigeria together with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) were awarded close to a 30,000£ research grant by the British Academy in the framework of the 2011 International Partnership Scheme to start a 3-year scholarly programme in the history of medical Research in Nigeria. The project is led by Dr. John Manton (LSHTM) and Gérard Chouin (IFRA-Nigeria). The project is entitled : "Medical Research, Development and Memory in Colonial and Postcolonial Nigeria". This partnership aims to extend the European collaborations being developed through the successful ESRC-Open Research Area (ORA) "Memorials and remains of medical research in Africa" project (2011-2014), led at LSHTM by Wenzel Geissler (GHD), to include an Africa-based partner institution, IFRA-Nigeria, in order to develop Nigerian research, teaching capacity and scholarly production in the history of medicine, with a specific focus on the history of medical research (both clinical and pharmaceutical) in Nigeria.
The primary aim of this partnership is in capacity development in research in the Nigerian higher education sector. A significant output rests on the academic training of 36 scholars in a domain rarely explored by African scholars, and the training will include a module on teaching issues pertaining to the history and anthropology of medicine and medical research. It is hoped that the critical mass of research and teaching seeded by this partnership can continue to be developed by Nigerian scholars and by the partners after the conclusion of the project period.
Further indication of specific publication and dissemination plans for the work carried out under this partnership are indicated in the relevant section below.
We expect this program to open collaborative projects in the area of the history of sciences and scientific research in Africa, and thus to form an important basis for the emergence of a strong and competitive cohort in the history and anthropology of medicine, which can generate globally significant research projects from a base in the African university sector.
The project will be organized over a period 34 months (September 2012-Jun 2014). Each year, we will organize a 5-day training workshop at a different location, to ensure coverage of the country's main research-oriented universities :
- Year 1 at Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), Zaria,
- Year 2 at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka (UNN),
- Year 3 at the University of Ibadan (UI).
In each year, the seminar will bring together 12 post-graduate students and Ph.D. holders (Ph.D. acquired in the last 5 years) from Nigerian universities, selected through a Call for Projects dealing with our subject. The training will take the form of a workshop during which they would be exposed to current research on our topic, would discuss theoretical trends and would also look at methodological and ethical issues. The workshop would also look at teaching the subject in Nigerian universities at undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
Participants would then discuss their project, describe the medical/research facility they would like to focus on and expand the project scope in the view of workshop discussions. After the seminar, participants will be given a 2-month period to write a detailed short-term research proposal. These will be evaluated by the team and the best 4 projects will receive a small fieldwork grant of £1200 to which IFRA Nigeria will add an equipment support grant to take the total to 2000 Euros, tocover a four month research period.
Successful candidates will return to subsequent years' training workshops to present on their fieldwork and to participate in the training of further candidates. It is envisaged at the conclusion of the funded period that further funding will be sought to institute and develop the initial training programme, to develop the publication and dissemination programme, and to assist in the career development of successful participants.