Graduate Students from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHUSS) and officials pose for a group photo during the Orientation Ceremony on 25th August 2023.
Graduate students at Makerere University have been assured that the university management is committed and has taken a deliberate decision to improve the graduate environment as the university transforms into research – led.
The students have also been assured that the University is committed to doubling graduate enrollment to improve its research profile and ranking on global scene.
The assurance was made by the Deputy Director in charge of Administration and Graduate Training Prof. Julius Kikooma while representing the Director DGRT during the 2023 Graduate orientation ceremony organized by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences in Yusuf Lule Auditorium on Friday 25th August 2023.
Kikooma reported that Makerere University and the Government of Uganda have been in negotiations with a donor who offered to build a five-storeyed Graduate School Complex.
The Directorate of Graduate Research and Training (DGRT) according to Kikooma discussed and approved the structural plan for the complex at the site of Afri-Child Centre near Lumumba Hall.
Prof. Julius Kikooma speaking on behalf of the Director DGRT.
Kikooma welcomed CHUSS Graduate students and thanked them for choosing Makerere as the university of their second degree despite the over 50 universities in Uganda and the region.
“I give you confidence that you actually made the right choice. Makerere has made the deliberate choice that after making 100 years, it is going to put its resources together to become the choice of graduate training in the region. We have done so well in research and impacted society through a range of things.
Kikooma told students that they have come at time when the university has made a commitment and building the foundation to become the University of choice for graduate training.
“Makerere is aiming to be ranked the number one university in the continent-the commitment management has. We are confident that we are going to take that number one position in a not so far future and that number one position is going to almost singularly come from what we do with graduate training”
Prof. Kikooma shared the kind of visions that the university has about the future with the DGRT as drivers and graduate students as the foundation.
One of the curious things about DGRT mandate According to Kikooma is to provide the home for graduate students. Much attention Makerere has had in the last 100 years, according to Kikooma had been on undergraduate training where units had spent more time and developed more infrastructure and support.
The graduate students Kikooma reported, form the minority students and hovers between 12 to 15%, and the commitment of management is to double enrolment of graduate students who are going to be the foundation for the aspirations of Makerere in terms of research.
In terms of the policy provisions, Kikooma said it has been made clear that student’s research must be visible not to stay in the library as dissertations and theses, but easily accessible to communities outside .
One of the policy provisions is that for PhD students to start with, they must at least publish two papers before they graduate as a basis for uptake by the communities that need this information.
“Now that the university has said we want to pay attention specifically to you. Take that advantage. You will definitely reap a number of benefits. We are committed as a directorate to provide that hope.
Kikooma reported that the University is working with government and other partners to put up a structure specifically for housing graduate students, a commitment to handling graduate matters.
Kikooma also briefed students on cardinal university policies they should familiarize with to help them succeed in their academic journey. These include the Graduate Handbook 2013, the Guild Student Statute 2022 and the Students Guild constitution 2022.
Dr. Pamela Khanakwa representing the Principal CHUSS.
The Principal CHUSS represented by Dr. Pamela Khanakwa congratulated the Graduate freshers for successfully being admitted to Makerere University Graduate School.
“We welcome you to the college and we are super excited that you chose not only Makerere University, but the College of Humanities and Social Sciences,” Your choice is of course, where the academic journey began for some of us. And where, of course, it also begins for you in Graduate School. And I’m very confident that from CHUSS, you can go anywhere in in the world,” she said.
Speaking from her experience when she joined in 1996 for an MA in History, Dr. Khanakwa said, she has moved on expressing hope that they too can be able to make the best use of all the resources in CHUSS and the university at large to accomplish their academic dreams.
“At CHUSS, we don’t just think, we think critically, we produce knowledge but we also have fun. So, as you begin your academic journey, here I argue you to concentrate on your academics, but also remember that there is life outside being in the library, writing the course works, writing exams, and of course eventually when you do your research and rate your dissertations.” Khanakwa advised.
Dr. Khanakwa assured students that they are in safe hands on reason that the staff at CHUSS are committed to do their best to support them to have the most rewarding academic experience.
“I want to assure you that we work as a team. We are here for you. We are here because of you. We are ready to support you in whatever possible way. We want you to be confident. We want you to be happy. So, if you encounter any issues that you need clarification, please do not hesitate to approach anyone of us and seek guidance”, she implored.
The orientation ceremony was graced by CHUSS members of management, school registrars, graduate coordinators, administrative staff and the student’s leadership as well as members from the university support units of Senate, DGRT among others.
Students were inducted on several academic matters including admission, fees payment and registration, the University academic calendar and change of program, as well as social issues including personal security, managing stress and relationships.
Mr. Vincent Abigaba addressing the audience.
The College Registrar Vincent Abigaba underscored the role of registration that begins with enrolment especially in first year adding that they must be ready to interface with ICT and register onto the ACMIS system.
“To enroll you are simply informing university management that you are ready on campus to perform your academic duties.”
The Principal Register in the DGRT Prossy Nakayiki re-emphasized registration as key and urged students to maintain their application credentials and whoever has issues to visit the admission office.
Nakayiki advised students to visit the respective school registrars with original transcripts for verification and registration saying the subsequent registration for continuing students should be done online.
“Make sure you create a person file where you keep all your correspondences. You are not a student unless you are registered. Registration is done in the first six weeks of the semester” She said
Nakayiki guided students on matters of deferment, withdrawal from the program, refund of tuition fees and general challenges faced by graduate students and sexual harassment as a real vice.
Dr. Roscoe Kasujja from the CHUSS Mental Health department advised students on the need to manage their mental health. He said every human being is a candidate of getting psychological disorder when unstable.
“If you do not manage problems, mental health swings in. Humans are social beings, the people closest to us, cause us distress. You made a decision to come. You have to manage those relationships”.
Dr. Kasujja observed that most graduate students struggle with problems which have solutions.
“You have classmates, registrars, lectures etc. Until you have exhausted all options, do not be dramatic, eliminate that stress.
Master the art of managing 24 hours and don’t make your issue an emergency for others. For every one, the clock is ticking, as you are managing your time, know that others are struggling within the 24 hours”.
Kasujja observed that at times graduate students take themselves too serious advising that, they must know what is required of them to pass examinations, He advised them to find time to relax, not miss out on happiness, for they have chosen the best college.
“At the end of the day, let’s get personal. There is so much that will influence your life. Be responsible for your own life. Every being is human, don’t overwhelm them. They may need you to part them at their back. Master the art of listening and understand what others are going through,”
Dr. Mike Barongo, Mr. Vincent Abigaba and Ms Prossy Nakayiki during the orientation.
Speaking on ICT support services and graduate training at Makerere University, Dr. Mike Barongo urged students to activate their portals and in case of challenges seek support at the Directorate of ICT.
He re-emphasized the importance of enrollment and registration every semester and to be active on the system as the senate will use the data on the system to learn them for graduation, generate certificate and transcripts.
With funding from Lisa Maskell, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHUSS), Makerere University has held several symposia targeting PhD students and early career scholars of Historical Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences from Makerere University. The CHUSS 2025 Graduate Symposium is now open to PhD students from Ugandan, regional and PANGeA affiliated universities.
This change in direction is cognisant of the achievements of the Graduate Schools in training the next generation of African scholars in Historical Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences. The interventions have checked the existential threats that these disciplines faced because of the denigration of higher education, especially the Humanities and Social Sciences disciplines, under the aegis of the International Momentary Fund/World Bank Structural Adjustment Policies of the 1990s. Indeed, the Lisa Maskell grants to the universities of Stellenbosch, Makerere, and Ghana have reversed the crisis within these disciplines and ensured their sustainability on the continent. Nonetheless, an organic networked and viable community of continental Historical Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences scholars and practitioners graduating from these universities has not been established. Therefore, CHUSS wishes to contribute towards building this community through this inaugural Graduate Symposium.
In this regard, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (CHUSS), Makerere University, invites PhD fellows from Makerere University including those from Ugandan, regional and PANGeA affiliated universities of Yaoundé, Nairobi, Dar es Salaam, Malawi, Stellenbosch, Ghana at Legon and Botswana to the 2025 CHUSS Graduate Symposium. The 2025 Symposium will congregate PhD fellows into an interactive and networking collaboration besides presenting their work in progress and acquiring requisite scholarly/professional skills for 21st century Humanities and Social Sciences academics.
Participation and Submission of Abstracts
The CHUSS Graduate Symposium 2025 hereby calls for 250-word abstracts drawn from the fellows’ work in progress such as research proposals, draft theses or research articles for presentation at Makerere University, Kampala from 19 to 21 June 2025. The Symposium will be preceded by a writing workshop that will be curated by Prof. Grace A. Musila (University of Witwatersrand), Dr Peter Wafula Wekesa (Kenyatta University), Dr Amon Ashaba Mwine (Makerere University) and Dr Isaac Tibasiima (Makerere University). The Symposium will start with a keynote address by Prof. Grace A. Musila on “Life after the PhD: Building and Nourishing Supportive Scholarly Communities and Networks”. It will also include a panel discussion on the challenges of graduate studies and mental health.
Funding
The Symposium is fully supported by a Lisa Maskell grant at Makerere University; therefore, participants from Ugandan, regional and PANGeA affiliated universities will not pay conference fees. However, the participants will have to meet their travel and accommodation costs in Kampala.
The Symposium will be held in-person at Makerere University and fellows who plan to attend should submit their abstracts clearly stating their name, affiliation and contact details to: chusssymposium@mak.ac.ug by Friday May 23, 2025. Contributors will be notified of the decisions on their submissions by Friday June 6, 2025.
For further information and inquiry, please write to:
Dr Edgar Nabutanyi: Symposium Convenor Email: edgar.nabutanyi@mak.ac.ug
Dr Levis Mugumya: Symposium Convenor Email: levis.mugumya@mak.ac.ug
Prof. Grace A. Musila University of the Witwatersrand Grace A. Musila is an Associate Professor of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa. She has taught African Literature at the University of Johannesburg, Stellenbosch University and University of the Witwatersrand. Her research focuses on Anglophone African literature and popular culture, primarily in East and Southern Africa. Her work interrogates how settler colonial history of East and Southern Africa and its twin legacies of epistemic injustice and selective apportionment of humanity continue to shape these regions’ formal institutions and socio-political practices.
The Academic Registrar Makerere University invites applications for the Special University Entry Examinations for admission to the Diploma in Performing Arts.
The examination will take place on Saturday 17th May, 2025.
Application process is online for those intending to sit the examination. Kindly note that there is payment of a non-refundable application fee of Shs. 110,000/- excluding bank charges in any (Stanbic Bank Branch, Dfcu Post Bank, UBA and Centenary Bank). The application fee includes 2 Past Papers availed to you on completion of the online process.
TO BE ELIGIBLE TO SIT THE EXAMINATIONS, THE CANDIDATE MUST POSSESS AN O’LEVEL CERTIFICATE (UCE) WITH AT LEAST 5 PASSES.
The deadline for receiving the online applications is Tuesday 13th May 2025.
How to Apply
Application is online for ALL applicants.
Other relevant information can be obtained from Undergraduate Mature Age Office, Level 5, Room 505, Senate Building, Makerere University or can be acceessed from https://see.mak.ac.ug
A non refundable application fee of Shs. 110,000= for Ugandans, East Africans Applicants (Including S. Sudan & DRC) OR US $ 75 or equivalent for international applicants plus bank charges should be paid in any of the banks used by Uganda Revenue Authority.
International Social Work and Social Development Conference
Call for Abstracts
Extended Deadline for abstract submission | Conference registration now open!!
Theme: Building Resilient Communities to Promote Equity and Social Inclusion for the attainment of Sustainable Development Goal (SDGs)
16th to 18th June 2025, Makerere University, Kampala Uganda
Makerere University’s Department of Social Work, in partnership with the East African Social Work Regional Resource Centre (EASWRRC) and the Association of Schools of Social Work in Africa (ASSWA) will host an International Conference on social work and social development from 16th – 18th June 2025 at Makerere University, Kampala. The Conference seeks to galvanise academic knowledge, debate and critical inquiry and engagements on the topical issues of equity, social justice and inclusion within the framework of attaining the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) while foregrounding practice knowledge as experienced by development actors across the globe. This conference is organised under the auspices of the NORAD-supported RESILIENT Project, implemented since January 2021 by a consortium comprising Makerere University, the University of Rwanda, the Institute of Social Work, Tanzania and the University of Agder Norway. The project seeks to enhance the participation of the vulnerable and marginalized members of society in the south in the development process itself. For more details on the conference and the ongoing project please visit the following website: https://resilient.uia.no/about-resilient/.
The Conference further seeks to enhance local content and scholarship through the applicability of generated knowledge to addressing local and regional development problems, within the confluence of the greater agenda for social work and social development and its emphasis on social change. This no doubt has ramifications for the application of good practices in social development interventions in other contexts within Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas and contributes to the evolution of global social work/social development practice which promotes contextual specificity and relevance without removing the need for international networking and collaborative engagement.
We are now pleased to invite you to submit abstracts to be presented at the International Social Work and Social Development Conference. We are particularly interested in presentations and contributions that reflect perspectives on social justice, equity, and inclusion within the framework of attaining the SDGs within developing countries.
Conference Justification
The proposed conference is conceptualised within the indigenisation and decolonisation model of social work which seeks to promote social development through culturally and contextually relevant interventions from the grassroots. The major thrust of the indigenisation and decolonisation perspective is based on the notion that the process of social development can only be meaningful and effective if it provides context-specific and tangible responses to the given social problems in a particular local or regional context (whether it be Africa, Asia, Latin America or any other setting). These responses must be related to the socio-cultural realities in that region (Twikirize and Spitzer, 2019[1]). The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (United Nations, 2007[2]) unequivocally recognises that respect for indigenous knowledge, cultures and traditional practices contributes to sustainable and equitable development and proper management of the environment.
The Declaration of the United Nations World Summit for Social Development in Copenhagen in 1995 and the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000, and their successor SDGs in 2015[3] all call out the need for role players such as social work and social development practitioners to review their strategies in addressing social injustices, poverty, social exclusion and inequalities. Within this context, social work is well positioned to explore more innovative ways to reach out to the poor and vulnerable and in doing so contribute more efficiently to addressing social exclusion and social inequality and to directly contribute to the realization of several SDGs (3, 4, 5, 8, 10, 13, 16 and 17). Moreover, SDG progress monitoring reports seem to suggest that much work needs to be done to attain these targets by 2030 (Halkos and Gkampura, 2021[4]).
Conference objectives
The conference aims to:
Bring together social work and social development practitioners, researchers, students, educators and policy makers in order to interact, learn and share each other’ experiences on pertinent social development issues.
Generate topical resolutions that can be utilised by local and central governments and institutions in the global South and North to further advance the debate/efforts regarding the attainments of SDGs.
Conference Themes
We welcome submissions on any of the following themes, broadly conceived:
Child Wellbeing and Child Protection
Youth Participation and Inclusion
Older Persons, Social Protection and Socio-economic Participation
North-South and South-South Partnership and Collaborations in Social Development
Green Social Work and Environment
University and Community Engagement/ Role of Universities in Community Transformation
Migration, Refugees and Development
Civil Society, NGOs, Social Work and Development Practice
The role of Social Work in Emergencies, Pandemic Crises and Conflict
Climate change
Rights Equity and Social Justice
Technology and social development
Mental Health
Creative features, languages literature and social transformation
Conference level
This is an International Conference targeting academics, development practitioners, policy makers, students, researchers and the general public from all continents across the global North and South. We however strongly encourage participants from the global South and the Africa region to submit abstracts and papers for the conference.
Specific instructions to authors:
The abstract submitted should not be more than 250 words
Nature of presentation:Poster presentations, oral presentations, panels and workshop formats
All abstracts should be submitted in Microsoft word format
The font type should be Times New Roman 12pt, 1.5 spacing
The presenting author should be presented first and underlined
Indicate the institutional affiliation and the country
Indicate the email address of the presenting/corresponding author
All abstracts should be submitted in English
Themes of the submission should also be indicated.
International networking and benchmarking on social development issues generally
Opportunity to influence social agendas within the global development landscape and social programming through impacting the regional and international social work associations and the United Nations agencies .
Conference Keynote Speakers
Prof. Antoinette Lombard, IASSW President and Professor of Social Work at University of Pretoria.
Prof. Jeannette Bayisenge, former Minister of Gender and Family Protection in Rwanda and Professor of Gender Studies, University of |Rwanda.
Prof. Ann Christin E. Nilsen, PI of the RESILIENT project and Professor of Sociology at the University of Agder, Norway.
Dr. Zena Mnasi Mabeyo, Head of the Department of Psychology at the Institute of Social Work, Tanzania.
Or in person: With $100 registration fees for non-Africa-based participants; Students $10 or UGX 30,000; National applicants $30 or UGX 100,000.
For Registration
Extended Deadline for abstract submission:30th April 2025
Date for confirmation of acceptance of abstracts: Given on a rolling basis effective 15th of March 2025. This will continue up to the 15th of May 2025.
Chair Local Organizing Committee Prof. Eric Awich Ochen Tel: +256 772 352 887 Email: eric.ochen@mak.ac.ug
Conference Secretariat Ms Doreen Ainembabazi Tel: +256 774 468 902 Email: ainembabazi.dorynn@gmail.com and
Ms Prisciline Aciro Tel: +256 778 549 669 Email: resilientconference2025@mak.ac.ug
[1] Twikirize, Janestic and Spitzer, Helmut (2019) Social work practice in Africa: indigenous and innovative approaches. Kampala: Fountain Publishers