Community-University Engagement
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Item Community-university engagement in a time of COVID-19(2020) Tandon, Rajesh; Hall, Budd LDr Budd Hall and Dr Rajesh Tandon reflect on how COVID-19 is reshaping community-university engagement, collapsing the physical boundary between town and gown as students and academics work from home. The pandemic has exposed a stark digital divide, with universities in high-income countries far better placed to sustain online teaching than those in low-income countries. One familiar approach treats science and academic expertise as the sole authority in a crisis. Another approach is gaining ground through the pandemic instead, one that brings local knowledge, citizen science and community wisdom into direct partnership with formal research, so findings reach the public faster than conventional academic channels allow. The paper suggests this shift tests whether higher education is genuinely committed to its communities or only performing engagement. It closes with practical directions for the future, from redesigning curricula around field study to reviewing knowledge systems through an ecology of epistemologies.Item International collaboration for changing the culture of research: The UNESCO Chair in community-based research and social responsibility in higher education(Autonomie Locali e Servizi Sociali, 2020-04-01) Hall, Budd L; Tandon, RajeshThis paper traces the development of the UNESCO Chair in Community-Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education, established through the long-standing collaboration of Budd Hall and Rajesh Tandon. It explains how the Chair promotes community-based participatory research by strengthening partnerships between universities, civil society organizations, and local communities across the Global South and the excluded North. This work includes global studies, open-access publications, international networks, and the K4C Consortium. Engaged research also supports the SDGs by fostering knowledge co-creation and socially responsible, locally grounded higher education. The paper argues that transforming research culture demands collaboration, knowledge democracy, and closer academia-community links to tackle social and environmental challenges.Item Bridging knowledge cultures: A guide for community practitioners and community organizations(UNESCO Chair, 2024) Lepore, Walter; Hall, Budd L; Tandon, RajeshThis guide by Walter Lepore, Budd Hall and Rajesh Tandon is about helping community practitioners and organisations build stronger research partnerships with universities. It draws on the larger Bridging Knowledge Cultures project, which studied ten K4C hubs across Indonesia, Malaysia, India, Uganda, Tanzania, South Africa, Colombia and Canada. The book explores partnerships in areas such as fishing communities, maternal health care, waste management, and early childhood education. Community knowledge is rooted in lived experience and oral tradition, while academic knowledge is typically validated through peer review and disciplinary standards, a gap that often leaves community knowledge undervalued within formal academic settings. It closes with practical recommendations for practitioners facilitating collaboration between communities and universities, pointing to trust, mutual respect, and the recognition of practices like storytelling as legitimate forms of knowledgeItem Reflections on the impact of Mwalimu Nyerere’s vision on adult and non-formal education(2021) Kassam, Yusuf; Hall, Budd LHow does Mwalimu Julius Nyerere’s vision of adult education guide us in planning development in changing times? In this chapter, Dr. Budd Hall and Yusuf Kassam revisit the work, vision, principles and institutional innovations that shaped adult and non-formal education in Tanzania during the 1970s. Writing from their own lived involvement at the Institute of Adult Education, the University of Dar es Salaam and later the International Council for Adult Education, the authors recount the literacy campaigns, radio learning groups and the training of adult educators under Nyerere’s leadership. Such initiatives led to dramatic reductions in illiteracy in the 1970s. Central to Nyerere’s vision was the integration of education into everyday life as a process rooted in socialist development. However, as capital driven priorities have reshaped Tanzania’s development trajectory, the authors ask what remains of this vision. They argue for reinvigorating literacy and adult education as critical tools to address contemporary challenges including climate change and deepening socio-economic inequalities. The preface is written by Budd L. Hall for Reigniting Hope: 50 Years of Adult Education in Tanzania (Dar es Salaam University Press, 2022). Hall opens with the 1976 World Assembly of Adult Education in Dar es Salaam, where Julius Nyerere gave the keynote speech. He describes the book as a celebration of Nyerere’s vision and of the people who put it into practice, and also as a critical look at what has happened to adult education over fifty years. He notes that funding has shrunk, while university enrolment has grown, and he links the future of adult education to a move from a knowledge economy towards knowledge democracy.