International Research Collaborations
Letter of intent – University of Helsinki (UH)
Collaborative activities were boosted between the University of Helsinki’s Theology Faculty and the University of Johannesburg’s during 2024. These were due to the efforts of Dr. Clementine Nishimwe and Prof. Elina Hankela from the Religion Studies department at UJ and Prof. Auli Vähäkangas from the Faculty of Theology at the University of Helsinki.
This collaboration included a visit to the University of Johannesburg (UJ) in February 2024 with various engagements. The visit culminated in a Letter of Intent signed between UJ’s Religion Studies department and UH’s Theology faculty. The first event hosted in October aligned with the Letter of Intent was a World Café.
The department hosted two international visitors in 2024, one in February and the second from April to May. Both visitors presented a seminar and engaged with students and staff at UJ. The two visitors were:
Professor Auli Vähäkangas: Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki (UH)
Professor Bruce Hall: Department of History, University of California
Dr. Shahid Mathee, who focuses on the social history of Timbuktu during the colonial era visited two universities in the USA: Virginia University and University of California, Berkeley in February and March 2024.
At Virginia University, he was hosted by Professor Amir Syed and Associate Professor Emily Burrill, Department of History and the Karsh Institute of Democracy.
At the University of California, Berkeley, he was hosted by Associate Professor Bruce Hall, Department of History. He and Bruce Hall are working on an annotated translation of the chronicle. Bruce Hall visited the University of Johannesburg as part of their ongoing collaboration.
During Professor Auli Vähäkangas’s visit she presented a seminar attended by staff and students.
Prof Hall delivered a paper at the Department of History, UJ and a joint seminar with Shahid in the Department of Religion Studies. Both seminars were attended by staff and students.
Dr Shahid Mathee presented two seminars at Virginia University. The first at the Department of History to a research seminar on Gender and Sexuality in African History. The seminar was an undergraduate class of 11 students, all History majors. The second seminar was for graduate students at the Karsh Institute of Democracy, University of Virginia.
At the University of California, Berkeley, he conducted a reading of an early twentieth-century Timbuktu fatwa (Islamic legal opinion) manuscript with PhD students in the Department of History. With Bruce Hall, he did a joint seminar titled, “Reading a Southern Saharan chronicle of the Azawad and the politics of irredentism, history and decolonization: Muhammad Mahmud ould al-Shaykh’s Kitab al-Turjumān” at the Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures (MELC). The Kitab al-Turjumān is a twentieth-century Timbuktu chronicle.
The UJ library partnered with the European Union to host a series of public lectures titled, ‘Enhancing Accountability Dialogue’. One of the lectures in the series focused on ‘Free to Care or Free to be Corrupt: Churches in South Africa’, was co-hosted with the Department of Religion Studies on 9 May.
A public lecture was co-hosted on 21 May with the Department of Philosophy as well. The lecture was titled, “Moral Regeneration, SDGs and Democracy”. The keynote speaker was SB Keshava Swamiji. Dr Shahid Mathee (Department of Religion) and Dr. Ashil Singh (Department of Philosophy) were respondents.
A World Café was held on 2 October 2024 as part of the ongoing collaboration between UH and UJ. The World Café included postgraduate students and staff members from both institutions. Two postgraduate students from each institution presented around the theme ‘Methodology and Positionality’. Two further World cafés are planned, one in 2025 and another in 2026, as part of the ongoing collaboration. Themes are planned for the sessions in 2025 and 2026 as well.
The World Café aims to contribute to academic collaboration between the two universities, enhancing interdisciplinary research and student collegiality. It is expected to be an opportunity to exchange research best practices and innovative ideas between postgraduate students and staff at the two institutions.
The World café session was a hybrid event with some students and staff from UJ in the Nadine Gordimer Auditorium in the UJ library while other UJ students, as well as the UH staff and students, were online. The UJ library and the Global Exchange division at UJ provided technical support for the event.
Although staff and students learnt from the presentations, which provided a deep dive into the positionality of researchers as they do research in and with religious communities, the technical capabilities did not provide optimal hybrid interaction. Hybrid and virtual internationalisation events and activities could be further enhanced by technology that offers greater flexibility when engaging in online activities that are part of such hybrid and virtual events. During the World café session, moving the camera in the Nadine Gordimer Auditorium made it difficult to maintain eye contact with the audience in the room and online, for example.
In September, Prof Zahraa McDonald co-presented a paper at the British Association for Comparative and International Education (BAICE) Conference held at the University of Sussex in Brighton. The paper, titled, ‘Articulations of Islamic Education related to national policies in Uzbekistan and South Africa: Implications for decoloniality’ with Prof Zilola Khalilova from Beruni Institute of Oriental Studies Academy of Sciences in Uzbekistan.
Planning for 2025
Theology faculty, University of Helsinki
At an institutional level, an Erasmus+ mobility grant was signed between the University of Helsinki and the University of Johannesburg in August 2024, and it will remain in effect until July 2027. This mobility grant targets staff and students working in education and theology at the two institutions.
For each academic year, the 2 staff (up to 12 working days per staff member) and 3 student exchanges are contracted from UJ to UH and in the other direction. Practically this could mean that 1 staff and 1 student move from UJ to UH and 1 staff and 1 student move from UH to UJ between Jan – June 2025, July 2025-June 2026 and July 2026 – June 2027 if UH receives sufficient funding.
It is intended that this mobility grant will contribute to optimizing the Letter of Intent and aims of the World Café sessions. Efforts will be made to foster strong and sustainable networks between staff and students at UH and UJ.
The department hopes to support staff and students in attending international conferences in 2025.
Students will be encouraged and supported to engage in international activities such as applying for summer schools and workshops.
The department is exploring possibly engaging in a COIL project in 2025.
The public lectures co-hosted in 2024 showed us the importance of partnerships within the faculty and institution in addition to those outside the institution. We think it is important to build on and foster such partnerships to enhance internal collaboration and deepen and sustain intellectual and scholarly debate in the institution.