The AURA Programme

Welcome to the blog site for the African Universities’ Research Approaches (AURA) Capacity Development Programme.
The AURA Programme is a learning partnership led by the Institute of Development Studies in collaboration with ITOCA (Information Training and Outreach Centre for Africa), and Professor Mark Hepworth at the Centre for Information Management (CIM), Loughborough University.  This programme, which started in April 2015 and will run for three years, is funded by the UK’s Department for International Development (DFID).

Overview and forthcoming activities 

AURA Programme Manager, Siobhan Duvigneau, gives an overview of the programme, talks about the learning partnership institutions, and outlines what activities are forthcoming for the work of the programme over the next few months:


  

Read the full transcript of the interview with Siobhan Duvigneau, AURA Programme Manager.

Vision and goals

AURA’s vision is to contribute to poverty reduction and economic growth by building the capacity of Universities, in Sub-Saharan Africa, to improve research-quality and research teaching.  The programme also aims to address continent-wide goals, as expressed at the UNECA annual conference (2014), to strengthen andsupport universities to transform Africa through investments in people-centredinnovations that will bring about economic prosperity and democratic and responsive governance.

The AURA Programme will work through a learning partnership with up to nine African universities, from April 2015 to March 2018, to achieve its goals for:

Stronger research and research communications: 

• Improved production of more effective research through an approach that emphasises information and evidence literacy and behavioural change. 
• Strengthened skills for communicating research and engaging in policy and research uptake processes.

Enhanced human capacity: 

• Teaching skills will be improved so that students passing through the university will develop stronger research and critical thinking skills.​

Sector strengthening:  

• This project’s approaches, tools, courses, and other materials will be shared widely with higher education institutes in Africa. ​

Collective knowledge - global south and north

AURA will, more broadly, bring together the collective knowledge of researchers and educators based in the global south and north to co-create a context-specific educational framework that will: address the need for locally generated research knowledge by skilled researchers (and graduates); and support faculty to nurture strong research and information capabilities in research-rich learning environments.  We will shortly be launching our AURA Wiki where we will be developing this work with broader stakeholders.

Finally, the AURA Programme Blog will provide a channel for our learning partners, to communicate programme learning and research communications.  We will shortly be publishing a series of videos - these videos will outline some of the key research paradigms and approaches.

Emma Greengrass
September 2015

Emma Greengrass is the Learning Coordinator for the African Universities’ Research Approaches Programme (AURA) based at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). She contributes to the development and delivery of online learning and events and the development of Communities of Practice for peer to peer learning.  She has an MA in Creative Writing and Personal Development from the University of Sussex.