Examples of this are the mentoring set-up at Martin Chautari (MC) for its in-house researchers and its on-going research fellows program for members from communities that have been traditionally underrepresented in higher education. Others have provided remedial courses with some time devoted to research experience. An example of this is the four-month long Immersion Course that used to be run in its later versions by the Social Science Baha.
Still others have tried to facilitate the funding aspects of this intervention by providing research fellowships for MA level students to do their theses at a university. Many organizations have run such programmes in the past and some still do. For example, New Era, Resources Himalaya, Winrock International, and MC have provided research fellowships earmarked for MA students to do research on specific topics.
Other interventions have provided such opportunities for both students and independent researchers. Among these, judged in terms of both the number of people supported and the money invested, the fellowship program run by the Social Inclusion Research Fund (SIRF) has been the most significant in recent years. SIRF is an initiative of the Norwegian Embassy in Nepal and is managed by a secretariat housed at SNV Nepal. It has just begun its second three-year phase.
In its first three-year existence, SIRF provided two types of fellowships to individual researchers. The first focused at supporting individuals who could demonstrate a track record of previous research with a two-or three-year fellowship amounting to a maximum total of Rs 1.5 million (15 Lakh). The second focused on supporting novices with a six-month research apprenticeship amounting to Rs 100,000 (one lakh). SIRF has supported two cohorts of both types of fellows during its first three years. I discuss the second program here – based on my experience of coordinating such a scheme at MC during 2007/08 – because it has general lessons for those who execute similar programs in a non-university setting.
Research Apprenticeship
In July 2007, SIRF entrusted MC to mentor about 40 research apprentices (RAs) it had selected. They were part of the second cohort of about 90 RAs selected by SIRF that year. This program was planned for a six-month period between August 2007 and January 2008. Seven senior researchers mentored the RAs on behalf of MC.
The program began with a week-long workshop, its main purpose being providing the RAs an orientation in selective aspects of social science research. Sessions were devoted to topics such as research models in exclusion and inclusion in Nepal, the notions of theory and methods in the social sciences, and issues related to the practical design and execution of research.
At the end of the workshop, most RAs said that it was quite helpful in enabling them to re-focus their research objectives and to get a better handle on the methods to execute their individual projects. Many of the RAs revised their proposals between mid-August and early October 2007. This entailed clarifying the objective of the research, specifying precisely the methodologies that would be used, and selecting the field sites where relevant. Once the revised proposals were approved by their mentors, the RAs began their research.
By the end of 2007, most of those who had completed their research earlier began to submit the first draft of their written output to their mentors. Those who submitted such articles or reports in early 2008 were asked to revise them up to four times in some cases. As of early March 2008, only 11 RAs had finished their research write-ups in versions approved by their individual mentors. Others who were granted extensions submitted their work in the subsequent months but some never did.
Lessons learnt
There were valuable lessons learnt from this exercise. Based on their research supervision experience, the MC mentors came to the following conclusions that have implications for similar programs executed by other organisations.
First, the RAs who worked on their research projects full-time benefited the most from the RAship. They were the ones who were most enthusiastic about revising their proposals during the early phase and also doing re-writings during the later phase. They were also the ones who sought out the help of their mentors on a regular basis.
Second, those who were either fully employed at the time when they were awarded the RAship or took up full-time jobs during its course did not really put in the necessary time and effort into executing their research project. Several RAs were never seen by their mentors after the August 2007 workshop or after they revised their proposals (at which point they were eligible to collect the second installment of their RAship). They had treated the RAship as an additional source of income and not an opportunity to learn research skills.
Third, most RAs, including those who were enthusiastic about their research projects, did not take part in other MC activities, namely, the many seminars that were held during their RAship. Very few made use of the MC library facilities. It would be appropriate to conclude that even the better RAs were hesitant to immerse themselves in the overall research enterprise by taking advantage of other research-related opportunities they had access to. A minimalist engagement approach toward the completion of their RAship seems to have been at work.
Fourth, with respect to the focus of the research questions asked by the RAs, most chose to do micro-studies with some fieldwork. This was good from the point of view of gaining research experience on the part of the individual RAs. They got some practice in asking the right questions and figuring out the process of trying to answer them. They also got some feel of what researchers mean by “field.”
But most articles or reports were weak in their engagement with what social scientists call ‘theory’. Most of them failed to locate their studies within the larger and relevant themes that have dominated related disciplinary discussions in the social sciences. Alternatively most failed to link their work with relevant macro-level discussions that have taken place within various strands of Nepal Studies.
For RAs whose grounding in social theory is weak, there is no alternative to participating in a reading-intensive remedial class work. Without such an input, the SIRF secretariat might be able to boast about the relatively large number of RAs that it has supported (such numbers look good in project reports), but what these individuals will produce will be mostly devoid of important insights.
Fifth, MC mentors felt that compared to the input provided (both financial and academic), the end written output was not up to the mark in the case of most RAs. Many had a difficult time communicating their research findings in the form of a coherent article or report. During the research methodology workshop in August 2007, many RAs had shown an interest in attending a workshop on writing a research article once they were done with their fieldwork. When MC suggested that such a workshop should be held in early 2008 (to give RAs time to benefit from it before the final deadline), SIRF decided that it could not be held then due to budgetary constraints.
For the mentors, it was quite revealing that SIRF had set aside money for publicity of its programmes and hired consultants and institutions for the same purpose but had no money to help RAs tackle the difficulties of academic writing. It goes without saying that the only way RAs can become better academic writers is through more writing and re-writing experience with inputs for revisions received from their academic mentors and copy editors who have a keen eye on how to make the writing of novices better.
The future
While the program demonstrated that a triangular managerial set-up between research novices (RAs), the funding agency (SIRF), and a mentoring institution (MC) could be worked out in our context, much needed to be thought through regarding the academic effectiveness of such an arrangement. The real academic challenges of trying to enhance research capacity outside of the university environment (some of which are indicated above) have never been tackled head-on by the consultants that have been hired over the years to provide advice on SIRF-related matters.
They never received serious attention from the previous Screening Committee, several members of which were too much in a hurry to talk about the “policy implications” of the research SIRF had funded but had no time and inclination to engage with the lessons learnt from various experiences of trying to enhance research capacity in non-university settings in Nepal. These challenges also did not deserve even a paragraph in the Project Document for Extension of the SIRF Assistance Programme submitted by SNV Nepal to the Norwegian Embassy in Kathmandu in May 2009.
The current obsession of the SIRF secretariat is on locating a ‘National Authority’ to which SNV’s SIRF managing duties can be transferred by 2011. Given this fact, I am afraid that the academic value-addition challenges faced by the two cohorts of RAs planned for 2010-2012 (the first of these is being selected currently) will go unaddressed.
Although the lessons discussed here come from analyzing SIRF’s research apprenticeship programme, they are generally applicable to all programmes being run by non-university based entities in the name of research capacity enhancement. Perhaps we can have a public discussion on the comparative strengths and weaknesses of various models that have been tried by different organizations.
Are there any takers?
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