As an African feminist researcher, I am very aware of the power of the lens we use in research to determine what we see as a problem, what we consider as knowledge, who and what gets considered in the knowledge-making process and more what does not get considered… I have even posited elsewhere (see Kwachou 2023) the need for questioning the theoretical lenses used when generating knowledge in/from African spaces. However, I’ve only ever considered the potential differences that theoretical framing can make from within the same social science fields of education and gender studies.  

Now, my current research position with the University of Bristol marks my first-ever venture into humanities research. Mind you, this project shares a great deal with most of my past work. As a Research Associate on the ERC-funded “The Creative Lives of African Universities: Pedagogies of Hope and Despair” project, I am still studying higher education experiences in Cameroon as I have done in the past, I am still using African-feminist lens, still reading into and adding to decolonizing education scholarship, still engaging in participatory research approaches, still studying education in Cameroon, still using a lot of the material I have used in the past… In many ways it seems to be ‘business as usual’ but it isn’t. One of the major takeaways from my first six months on the job was that although my case study was yet another Cameroonian higher education institution- I could not study it the same way. It is this eye-opening lesson that I would like to share in this brief blog.  

As a social scientist, I have been wired to study social problems. Although we are not as positivist as the natural sciences, we do tend to follow the scientific method; even if not we do not have a pre-fieldwork hypothesis, we proceed to the field with an “I’m going to find a solution” mentality. This is something I am now beginning to see as akin to ‘white saviorism’ in many ways. Perhaps we should coin “academic/intellectual saviorism” as a concept? But I digress.  

My first realization that I was going about studying my case differently (if not outright wrongly) was the systemic surety I seemed to have in the face of my colleagues’ childlike curiosity. As a somewhat perfectionist fresh out of doctoral and postdoctoral experiences in the social sciences, I had set out to build a research strategy to defend my choice of certain approaches and theories over others, have a timeline in place etc. etc. All of which I thought would impress my boss.  

On the contrary, Ruth (project PI) would regularly remind me to immerse myself in the literature and observe the case a bit more before setting out a strategy to ‘solve’ what I perceived was the problem. She would prioritize visits to museums and the study of poetry related to our topic or aspects of it and just open casual discussions of what we’re reading. For someone who is used to being judged based on outputs, I couldn’t reconcile this manner of going about the study with what I’ve done in the past. I was outright shocked at my boss encouraging me to dabble in my creativity more. In one of our last meetings, she said “I believe you to be a creative person, and I would like to see you go about this research creatively and not with the rigour of the PhD, you are not being graded here…”

It occurred to me then that all the while I wanted to do things the ‘right way’ so much that I hadn’t questioned what made a certain way ‘right’, for whom and when it was ‘right’. I hadn’t considered how I would go about exploring the University of Yaoundé I if the research were driven by a desire to truly document the evolution of the institution, the life it holds as a social ecosystem and how it, in turn, has shaped lives and the communities in, around, and through it. It is at this point that I noted what a difference studying higher education in dialogue with a different field will make- just as much if not more- a difference as with the lens used.  

Whereas I had thought I was too much of a creative for academia before – during my PhD I was warned against colloquial writing and told my creative re-storying of participant narratives was not adequate as analysis. Here I’m being encouraged to blog regularly and consider alternative methods of research outputs that would engage the non-academic populace. But that isn’t all, it’s not just about one field being more systemic/structured in its inquiry and the other being more creative and unbound. It is more about what that speaks of; what that permits and what abounds when there is no preconceived problem we set out to ‘solve’ nor a single right way we deem right to solve it.  

In this way, doing interdisciplinary research with the humanities for the first time has forced me to do more introspection, interrogating the coloniality I have internalized as fact and personal preference. I have thus far asked myself:  

Why did I rule out undergraduate students as co-researchers? 

Why- when problematizing the issue of bilingualism, sociolinguistic and ethnic marginalization on the UNIYAO I campus did I see a need to investigate only knowledge production and not artistic representations around the campus?  

What is it that made me value the language of instruction and bureaucratic processes in shaping identities rather than questioning the naming of the buildings?  

… and much more 

This time engaging with humanities research perspective has made me understand both the reason why people presume scholarly engagement in arts fields is “frivolity” as well as why it is they are wrong given its necessity. While I already had a caustic rejoinder back when the current Cameroonian Minister of Vocational Training blamed students’ pursuit of humanities degrees for their unemployment, this experience has positioned me to better respond to him (perhaps in the next blog post?). In a way, I have realized that a great deal of such thinking is rooted in our collective “survival mentality” wrought by trauma from imperialism and capitalism. I’ll never forget the Upper-sixth philosophy lesson where we were taught the reasons why philosophy took off in Ancient Greece in a way it didn’t in Egypt despite many of the Greek philosophers having learned from ancient Egyptians. A key reason that stuck with me: the Greeks had answered the question of subsistence, and so they were -in that season- able to philosophize unhindered by fears linked to basic needs.  

 

That reason stuck with me then, but I appreciate it even more now. Most of my people have struggled with basic needs all their lives; we are continuously uncertain if the tap will run tomorrow, we brace for when next there will be a power outage or forever thinking of how to become independent and provide for the plethora of less fortunate relatives etc. etc. There is always a problem for us to solve and so we have seen education as a vaccine for problems; research as the search for solutions.  

And while that is a fact established by decades of education and development research and practice, thinking of education and research only from that angle is pitiful. Because such thinking limits us, many of us stop inquiring out of the curiosity that characterizes human nature and only inquire because we need to find the “right” solution. After a while, some of us don’t read out of love for it but out of a desire to find evidence to support an argument…  

Many, like me, stop seeing learning as something to practice- failing, rediscovering and trying again- and rather uphold it as something to achieve. Something that is only as worthy as its outputs; particularly the outputs that matter because certain bodies have said they matter… *cough* academic publishing *cough*. 

  

Engaging in humanities research for the last few months has been humbling in that I have been forced to unlearn my own prejudices about everything from what sort of research matters to what research outputs can be like… I am no longer who I was prior to  

• My reading of Jacqueline Mougue’s work articulating the role of clothing and cooking in Separatist politics and furthering of linguistic divides in Cameroon;  
• My attendance at an illuminating presentation (2023 Oxford Torch Humanities Conference) that poised Amos Tutola for all his “bad English” as equivalent in ideological contemporary decolonial studies professors given how he had made points they present as advanced today decades ago in a more accessible format 
• The writing inspiration I have experienced at University of Bristol events where digital storytelling was used to demonstrate analysis and present findings  
• The pride I have felt while reading Omotayo (2023) work with an abstract in Yoruba.  

I am no longer who I was because I now better appreciate that these seemingly ‘aesthetical’ and ‘frivolous’ things speak of a great deal.  

Since taking this job, I have severally been asked “what my research is addressing”. At first, I saw nothing wrong with such questioning and would reply with what my research has the potential to unearth. Now, I see that question as similar to that which our P.I. was asked regarding her naming of the project “The Creative Lives of African Universities…” The scholar wondered if she was ‘exoticizing’ African institutions and Africans by using such an adjective. 

Now I respond to the question “What is your research addressing?” with “I do not set out to address anything, I am first and foremost exploring and investigating”. So too I would suggest that our team responds to any future questioning of the word ‘creative’ in the research title, with “it is not that our case studies are ‘creative’ [though they likely are] but that our methods and approaches to inquiry are. It is that- as researchers of the humanities- we seek to be as creative as possible in the process of creating knowledge.” 

 

One thing I have found this response does is free me. I’ve put down what can be termed ‘the elitist burden of the knower’ to address a problem and expectations of there being either a solution to be found or one that can be found within the research timeframe.

And I anticipate the benefits of this freedom shall make for a far more interesting research experience.