HIGHLIGHT: RESEARCH ACTIVITIES BLOOMING AT WARC

 

The months of December 2006 and January 2007 should definitely go down on record as landmark dates for the development of research activities at the West African Research Center (Warc). Indeed, many events all focused on research in and on West Africa have been pursued and strengthened or initiated in the period: On January 12, 2007, the Crepos project (Centre de Recherches sur les Politiques Sociales), which has been now operating at Warc for several months held a major meeting on Warc premises to seek ways and means to consolidate its activities and capacities. The Director of the Crepos project, professor Momar Coumba Diop, invited the Wara President, Maria Grosz-Ngate, (who was then in Dakar) and the Director of the Center, Ousmane Sene, to meet participants to the meeting. The opportunity was seized by both the Wara president and the Warc Director to pledge the Center's unwavering commitment to contribute to developing research in and on the sub-region. Participants to the meeting are all high-profile academics, researchers and administrators in the sector of the social sciences hailing from such institutions as the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the Agence Universitaire de la Francophonie (AUF) and University Cheikh Anta Diop (UCAD).

Meanwhile, in the course of December 06 and January 07, Maria Grosz-Ngate, Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University (and Wara president) held interviews and meetings on her research project in the office made available to her at the West African Research Center.

In the same month of December, Abdourahmane Sene, a consultant for the Ticfia Project whose purpose is to create online resources on Diversity and Tolerance in the Islam of West Africa for the illustration of peaceful Moslem practice, started work and was assigned an office and computer equipment at the Center.
In early January 2007, two of the three Wara-Warc sponsored West African Fellows joined the Center to continue their doctoral research activities in the spacious office offered them and equipped with three new laptops and other office equipments. While Madina Diallo (a research fellow from Mauritania) is at Warc to complete her doctoral work on the subject "Synthèse de Composés Polynucleaires: Etudes Cristallographiques, Magnétiques et Spectroscopiques", the other recipient, the Senegalese Mouhamadou El Amine Diop, is focusing on "Les Dynamiques et Impacts du Tourisme dans les Deltas du Fleuve Sénégal et du Saloum". The third fellow will join the center in the course of the month of February 2007. On january 8-12, 2007, the Center offered work space to a seminar on the designing of an electronic monolingual wolof and bilingual wolof-french dictionary ("Conception d'un Dictionnaire Electronique Unilingue Wolof et Bilingue Wolof-Francais"). Participants to the Seminar included researchers from the Department of Linguistics, University Cheikh Anta Diop, the Institut Fur Linguistik-Phonetik, University of Cologne, Germany, and the Centre de Recherche Termisti, Institut Superieur de Traducteurs et Interpretes, Haute Ecole de Bruxelles, Belgique (Belgium). Participants sent a message of appreciation and thanks to the Warc Director and staff the message is available at : (http://www.ltt.auf.org/article.php3?id_article=216)

In an effort to upgrade the professional capacities of the Warc library staff for improved support and assistance to researchers, Wara and Warc invited librarian Emilie Ngo Nguidjol from the University of Wisconsin (Madison) to visit the Center in Dakar and conduct training sessions for the library staff. Mrs Nguidjol was also invited by the Warc Director to offer presentations on library research and the new information technologies at the School of Librarians and Archivists (Ebad), University Cheikh Anta Diop and for the staff at the library of University Gaston Berger (St-Louis, Senegal).

 

It should be noted that the Researchers' section in the Warc Library has been, meanwhile, offering its work space and computers to Phd candidates affiliated to the Center working on their various research subjects:

- Hannah Gilbert (McGill University - Canada): "Laboratory Landscapes: Experimentation and the Contours of HIV Knowledge Production in Senegal, West Africa" - Raina Croff, Yale University: "Village des Bambara: an Archaeology of Domestic Slavery: Goree Island 16th to 19th Century"

- Gretchen Pfeil, University of Chicago: "Small Changes, Big Changes: Religious Commitments and Material Consequences in Dakar's Charitable Economies"

- Tsitsi Ella Jaji, Cornell University: "Contemporary African Cosmopolitanism through a Study of Representations of Popular Music in Literature and Film by Senegalese Artists"

- Awa Ba, Uppsala University, Sweden: ""Little Senegal" in New York: the Daily Reproduction of "Home" among Senegalese Women Migrants".

Researchers affiliated at Warc were invited by the Director to initiate a monthly Forum to have the opportunity to meet at least once a month in an informal setting and atmosphere at Warc to discuss various issues of interest and relating to their research pursuits. The initiative will be spearheaded by Hannah Gilbert and Awa Ba who were also urged by the Director to involve the three Warc fellows and, possibly, open the Forum to other researchers in Dakar.

 

It should be added, by way of conclusion, that research is also promoted by the Center through the assistance and help offered researchers on very short visits in Dakar and numerous e-mail and telephone exchanges with researchers planning to visit Dakar and the Center or inquiring for information on research institutions and opportunities. The Warc Public Lectures, Film Series, Researchers' Seminars are also events promoting the development of research and the involvement of researchers, scholars, artists and students in thought-provoking and vista-opening intellectual and academic exchanges.

Ousmane Sene Director,
Warc