Dr Melis Cin is embarking on a significant research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). The project, titled "Building Equitable African-Led Partnerships Across Africa: Setting the Agendas for Gender, Conflict, and Creative Economies," focuses on three critical themes: girls and women, conflict, and the creative economy.

The research team includes Professor Parvati Raghuram from The Open University, Dr. Melis Cin, Professor Ashley Gunter from The Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Center in South Africa, Dr. Wyclife Ong’eta from the Oasis Peace Web Organisation in Kenya, and Dr. Manu Lekunze from the University of Aberdeen.

This initiative builds on a decade of research, work, partnerships and engagement in Africa by Dr. Cin and her colleagues, addressing issues highlighted in her THE (Times Higher Education) publication where she critiques the unequal power dynamics in research partnerships between the Global South and Global North. The project aims to establish best practices for supporting equitable partnerships in future funding opportunities.

The research will employ a bottom-up and African-led approach, engaging with local communities, activists, grassroots organisations, and community-based organisations, as well as stakeholders from the African Union, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the British Academy, local funders, international organisations, and government bodies. The agenda will be set by rights holders (communities, grassroots organisations), promoting more equitable ways of collaboration. Workshops will be held in South Africa and Kenya; Representatives of local funding bodies/governmental stakeholders across Africa and from regional hubs in these countries (created during Dr Cin and her colleagues' previously funded research) will attend and feed into these meetings.

The project will follow three strategic directions:

• expanding networks through open calls, snowballing, and stakeholder mapping;
• equitable participation, drawing on the team’s work and produced guidelines in decolonising arts and humanities research, which include project management, partnerships, ethics frameworks, data sources, stakeholder engagement, methodologies, data analysis, data sovereignty, and dissemination;
• listening and sharing, employing verbal and non-verbal arts and humanities methods to build trust and facilitate meaningful exchanges.

African leadership will be embedded throughout the project, redefining research partnerships to ensure they are driven by the needs and perspectives of African stakeholders, thereby fostering a more equitable and inclusive research environment.