UP selected to host Carnegie African diaspora scholar

The University of Pretoria (UP) was selected by the Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship Program (Carnegie ADF Program) to host an African diaspora scholar from the United States. The scholar will be involved in a collaborative project on introducing new clinical measures for communication assessment developed within the framework of the ICF-CY (International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health: Children & Youth Version).

The University of Pretoria will lead the project, together with Prof Brenda Louw from East Tennessee State University.  Prof Louw has a long history with the University of Pretoria, where she served in various capacities until 2009. She was Head of the Department of Communication Pathology at UP when she moved to East Tennessee State University to take up her current position as Professor and Chair of the Department of Communicative Disorders, in October 2009.

Prof Brenda Louw

The University of Pretoria project is one of 59 projects that will pair African diaspora scholars with higher education institutions in Africa to collaborate on curriculum co-development, research, graduate teaching, training and mentoring activities. Prof Brenda Louw is one of 60 African diaspora scholars who have been awarded fellowships to travel to Africa to conduct projects, which span an impressive range of fields across the arts and humanities, social sciences, education, sciences, technology, engineering and mathematics.

This innovative fellowship programme facilitates engagement between scholars born in Africa who are now based in the United States or Canada and scholars in Africa on mutually beneficial academic activities. The programme is managed by the Institute of International Education (IIE) in collaboration with Quinnipiac University, which chairs the Advisory Council, and is funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. 

The Carnegie ADF Program Advisory Council, comprising academic leaders from Africa and prominent African diaspora academics, has remarked on the quick growth, increased quality, impact and uniqueness of the programme, which allows African universities to take the lead in hosting African diaspora scholars at their institutions.

According to the program’s Advisory Council, “The programme contributes to brain circulation and global networking of ideas creating new knowledge in a non-hierarchical empirical manner − the exchanges are grounded in equality. The pool represents the future of the US and Africa with a new crop of talented scholars who represent their fields and the future of their disciplines. Creating large constituencies across the Atlantic reinforces collaboration instead of domination, strategic partnership instead of academic distancing, and the various projects contribute to rethinking the epistemologies of knowledge.”

US- and Canadian-based scholars can apply for fellowships and African host institutions can submit project requests to be considered in the third selection cycle. Scholars born in Africa who live in the United States or Canada and work at an accredited college or university in either the US or Canada can apply to be on a roster of available candidates.  Candidates must have a degree in their field and can hold any academic rank. Public and private higher education institutions in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa, Tanzania and Uganda can submit a project request to host a scholar for 14 to 90 days. A prospective host may, but is not required to, name a proposed scholar in a project request. The proposed scholar and project request are each evaluated by a review committee and are subject to approval by the Advisory Council. African institutions and prospective fellows (scholars) can collaborate on ideas for a project that the institution submits. The IIE maintains the scholar roster to facilitate matches in accordance with discipline specialisations, expertise, activities and objectives described in a project request.

All of the fellows and host institutions for the first two rounds of Carnegie ADFs, along with the selected fellows, are listed on the programme website, along with highlights of projects and comments from the first round of fellows and hosts.