Summer 2000 marked the successful launch of the Leadership Alliance International Research for Minority Scholars program in the humanities and social sciences. This past summer, 15 graduate and undergraduate students and five faculty members from 10 of our member institutions joined Professor Lina Fruzzetti, Ph.D., the AIRMS program director, for cultural research at five African sites.

The AIRMS program, funded by the Ford Foundation, started with a 10-day orientation on different aspects of the continent at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). SOAS along with the five African universities—the University of Ghana, the University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), the University of Natal, the University of the Western Cape (both in South Africa) and the University of Namibia—were the Leadership Alliance’s partners in the AIRMS program.

In Africa, the group divided into five teams of three students and a faculty member to concentrate on a joint research project with the African university partners. “I visited the five sites to assess the success of the program and understand the challenges that the participants might encounter,” said Dr. Fruzzetti. “I was so impressed by our research interns.

“They all worked so hard to use the language skills that they garnered at SOAS. Hearing some of the students and faculty speaking Zulu, Kiswhahili and Akan confirmed for me the success of the language component of the orientation. Language helped to shape the direction of their research."

In Accra, Ghana, on the West African coast, an AIRMS team studied the legal rights of Ghanaian women in the family. While on the East Coast in Tanzania, researchers studied the issues surrounding theatre and social development.

In South Africa, the group in Durban centered their attention on researching community needs and social capital in the Valley Trust region. The Bellville group worked on an exciting topic concerning the public history and representation of the past as a way to understand identity formation and the question of citizenship in the new South Africa.

The AIRMS program researchers in Namibia had the difficult task of working on a language-related project that focused on the challenges involved in the preservation of indigenous languages and cultures. Reconstructing old languages proved to be quite arduous, but the research team managed to come up with an excellent methodology that will benefit the linguistic department of the University of Namibia.

All of the participants reported that they benefited greatly from their scholarly journey to Africa, and some said they hope to return in the future. The interaction of ideas and lively discussions that the program fostered in both London and Africa have helped to shape new avenues of research and academic directions for many of the participants. The AIRMS Program Committee is already in the process of selecting the research topics for next summer. The expanded AIRMS program for summer 2001 will include the University of Zimbabwe on the current list of university hosts and be able to serve more research interns.