The School of IT, the UCT Centre in ICT4D, and CITANDA invite you to a roundtable seminar with Dorothea Kleine, from the Sheffield Institute for International Development, University of Sheffield.  The topic of the seminar is "Towards equitable research partnerships in an unequal world: Sharing experiences and exploring collaborations". 

Knowledge production and academic research in the area of information and communication technologies for development (ICT4D) takes place in a global context riven with inter-country, intra-country and inter-institutional inequality. Further, the national and global politics of research funding, university alliances, the dominance of university rankings, journal impact factors and centralised research evaluation exercises all create incentive systems which can foster, but can also distort the pursuit of scholarly excellence and impact for positive change in the world. Within these complex and contradictory systems, we seek to build sustainable and equitable partnerships between ICT4D researchers, groups and universities in the global South and North. 

This round table is open to all, and will kick off with three short input pieces, one of which will be offered by Professor Dorothea Kleine (University of Sheffield). Prof Kleine is Principal Investigator of the GCRF Strategic Network on Digital Development (http://ddsn.group.shef.ac.uk/) which unites 29 researchers from 13 different countries. In her input talk she will reflect on the structural steps she took to enable equitable South-North partnerships, as well as an egalitarian ethos to encourage collaborations across institutions, disciplines, and career stages. She will reflect on successes, failures, limitations and opportunities arising. This will be followed by short input pieces from colleagues based in SA, before the audience is invited to join the discussion. The roundtable is designed to be a space for sharing experiences, mutual learning and identifying steps forward.