Collaboration between HaB's Ghana Project and Department of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology, Leiden University
Ms. Stephanie Huber, a graduate research student from Leiden University, joined the Ghana project team last Tuesday to begin her field stint in Cape Coast and Akosombo in central and eastern regions of Ghana respectively.
Stephanie’s research project, which resonates with Ghana's humanities pedagogy project, relates to “The dynamics of transmission of Pan-African ideals in Ghanaian educational institutions”.
In this thesis, Stephanie seeks to interrogate the dynamics of the transmission of Pan-African ideals in Ghanaian educational institutions (more precisely in selected Ghanaian pre-university schools) and wants to find out how students understand, ‘re-perform’ and transform these ideals through practices. Significantly, her emphasis is on the Ghanaian student’s understandings, experiences and reinterpretations of national, African and Pan-African identities. She maps out schools as places where the relationship between state and its citizens is negotiated. By studying Pan-African ideals in schools Stephanie hopes to identity how these ideals are transformed as they are incorporated into an institution with its own dynamics, customs and associations. She does want to focus on the role of the educational institution in transmitting Pan-African ideals certainly, but beyond that, also wants to enhance our comprehension of how these ideals are understood by the students themselves. We are glad to work with Stephanie as her research will contribute significantly to the existing body of knowledge about the understanding of the concepts of nations and belonging by the people themselves.
We are arranging connections at the Faculty of Education at University of Cape Coast, and through the Ministry of Education, some secondary schools to facilitate her field work.
Kojo Opoku Aidoo