Masterclass: Can Human Knowledge Dismantle Time and Space?
A Masterclass exploring the application of Borderless Research to enhance globalised reality in academia and policy-making
Facilitator: Professor Michael Baffoe, University of Manitoba
Date: Thursday 12 March 2020
Time: 10.00am — 1.00pm
Venue: Arts Hall (Room 222), Old Arts Building, University of Melbourne.
For more information and bookings visit http://go.unimelb.edu.au/3xgr
Research is a process that aims to discover and advance the frontiers of knowledge. It is concerned with increasing our understanding of issues in our localities/immediate environments and outside our localities. Research begins when we become inquisitive about a phenomenon. It can assume many forms, depending on the discipline to which it pertains. It may pursue the proving or disproving of theory for the purposes of developing or contributing to a body of knowledge in a field. It is a tool for facilitating learning. Research is also a quest to understand various issues that enhance public awareness and knowledge. It can be a process to impeach lies and to support truth.
Research is guided by its accoutrement of seed money to love reading, writing, analysing and sharing valuable information. As scientific organisations vie for an ever-expanding global audience, transcending national borders, researchers in other disciplines are now embracing this concept too, leading to the emergence of one of the new frontiers, Borderless Research. As a form of internationalisation, it posits the growing network of communication, transactions and organisation that transcends national frontiers . This movement can be seen as a coordinated process, geared towards the production of knowledge and the dissemination of the knowledge created across international boundaries. To this extent, Borderless Research and higher education transcend time and space, moving from the national, the international and finally to transnationalism.
There is therefore the need for an increasing nexus, especially in research and higher education, between local and international actors, within the increasing globalisation arena, in which the actors (citizens) are inter-connected and inter-dependent. The world is now regarded as a global village, in which whatever happens in one small corner of the globalised village has increased, and sometimes present instant, repercussions on other segments or actors in the global arena.
This Masterclass will explore the obvious necessity of the new Borderless Research trend and its impact in higher education, in politics and policy formulation/implementation, community development, global diplomacy and the direction of the world economy.
The Masterclass is presented as part of the African Studies Group inaugural conference on Borders, Identities and Belonging in a Cosmopolitan Society: Perspectives from African Migrants in the Diaspora, 12–14 March 2020. Register to attend the conference here.
Professor Michael Baffoe is a Professor of Social Work at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada. He holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree (University of Ghana), Bachelor of Social Work (McGill), Master of Social Work (McGill), PhD (Social Work/Educational Studies, McGill). He is the Chair of the Ph.D Program at the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Manitoba. Dr. Baffoe’s areas of research interest and teaching are on world migration and refugee movements, settlement and integration in new societies, especially settlement implications for youth in new societies. Since 2008, he has founded, and been the Chair of a renowned International Conference on migration and settlement dubbed Strangers in New Homelands, at the University of Manitoba.
