With funding from the Danish Development Research Council, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHUSS), Makerere University is inviting applications from well-qualified students for two interdisciplinary PhD positions as part of the Uganda country component of a cross-country collaborative research programme titled Certifications of Citizenship in Africa (CERTIZENS). This is a collaboration between the Department of Development Studies at Makerere University, the Institute of African Studies at the University of Ghana and the Centre of African Studies at the University of Copenhagen.

CERTIZENS is an interdisciplinary, multi-layered research project, which explores the complexities of regimes of citizen certification and the forms of identification these generate, circulate, manage and attempt to control, in selected African settings.

APPLICATION PROCESS

Applicants are advised to consider the two PhD projects identified as part of the CERTIZENS programme in Uganda when making the application. Details on the projects are in the detailed advert below.

SUBMISSION OF APPLICATIONS

Applications should be submitted via email to the following addresses. The Principal, College of Humanities and Social Sciences; principal[at]chuss.mak.ac.ug copy to ahikirejosephine[at]gmail.com; kikooma[at]gmail.com; and god.asiimwe[at]gmail.com.

DEADLINE

Applications should be submitted by Friday, 30th October 2020.

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In 2018, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHUSS) with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in New York and Gerda Henkel Stiftung introduced the CHUSS Symposia series with the aim of fostering a vibrant academic environment to promote intellectual debate and knowledge production at the University. The annual symposium brings together scholars from across the region to deliberate on issues of national and international importance.

On 16^th-17^th September 2020, the College held the third annual symposium under the theme; “The Ivory Tower meets Jua Kali: Reflections on theorizing the Profound from the Ordinary”. The 2020 Humanities and Social Sciences Symposium presided over by the Vice Chancellor of Makerere University, Prof. Barnabas Nawangwe, sought to investigate how and with what successes the academy can centre the untapped node of knowledge that exists on the periphery of the Ivory Tower.

During the two-day blended academic engagement held at Makerere University, over 80 scholars from across the region presented papers on a number of topical issues including Institutions and Instability; Popular and creative Arts; Politics, Policy and Governance; Language, Translation and Transition; Identity and Belonging; Psychology and Wellbeing; Archives and Media; Subaltern Narratives; Pedagogy, Curriculum and Classroom practice; National Narratives and Construction; Archaeology Beyond the Ivory Tower; Languages, Gender and Ideology; Media Presentations; Gender Identity and Spaces; Violence, Peace Building and Democracy; and Performing Protest and Contest.

Delivering her keynote address, Dr Grace Musila who engaged in a virtual conversation on the theme with Mr. Isaac Tibasiima, emphasized the importance of ordinary knowledge in transforming society. She underscored the need for academics to move from the colonial style of conducting research and focus on the realities in their communities. “We need to always understand why we are conducting research and the impact it has on our communities. Much as our funders may have specific interests, we need to assert ourselves and focus on research that benefits our communities. Our research should be in position to address the challenges within our societies,” she noted. Dr Grace Musila is an Associate Professor in the Department of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and Mr. Isaac Tibasiima is a Lecturer in the Department of Literature at Makerere University.

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In this genealogy of political modernity, Mahmood Mamdani argues that the nation-state and the colonial state created each other. In case after case around the globe—from the New World to South Africa, Israel to Germany to Sudan—the colonial state and the nation-state have been mutually constructed through the politicization of a religious or ethnic majority at the expense of an equally manufactured minority.

The model emerged in North America, where genocide and internment on reservations created both a permanent native underclass and the physical and ideological spaces in which new immigrant identities crystallized as a settler nation. In Europe, this template would be used by the Nazis to address the Jewish Question, and after the fall of the Third Reich, by the Allies to redraw the boundaries of Eastern Europe’s nation-states, cleansing them of their minorities.

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