The Makerere Institute of Social Research (MISR) is inviting applications for the position of director.
Professor Mahmood Mamdani, the outgoing director at MISR, has come to the end of his two-term tenure of five years each.
MISR is also looking for two research fellows.
The required qualifications are a PhD degree, a minimum of 10 years of proven experience in research, 12 publications of which eight are articles refereed in journals or books and two are single-authored books.
The key outputs of the position are; continuity and development of the MPhil/PhD programme, development of the institute’s research and publication programme, mobilization of national and international funding, regularly reporting to the MISR academic board and the institute’s board of studies.
The transformation of MISR began in 2012 with the introduction of the five-year multi-disciplinary MPhil/PhD program in Social Studies.
MISR was until then a consultancy unit where the client sets the research question. After 2012, it gradually became a research institution, where the student and faculty researcher formulates the question.
The research output and impact is manifested in many activities. The MISR publications over the years have covered many diverse areas. These include; land, food, ethnic issues, political movements, integration, history.
Mamdani said that when COVID-19 made travel impossible, MISR shifted to Zoom and launched a weekly series of ‘global conversations’ with scholars from around the world speaking on their work.
He said there has been a remarkable expansion of higher education on the African continent, particularly in the middle belt colonised in the late 19th century, over the past two decades.
The professor said that student numbers have gone up astronomically, but not that of instructors.
He explained that the gap is filled by ‘moonlighting faculty from more established universities, and by instructors whose qualifications remain limited to a masters’ level. He observed that not surprisingly, most universities remain teaching institutions, with research a poor add-on.
He noted that this context explained why the doctoral fellows who graduate from MISR are eagerly absorbed in higher institutions in Uganda, established and new.
Mamdani said it explains why MISR graduates are just as warmly welcome in the more established universities around the continent.
He has been nominated by Prospect magazine in its annual list of the World’s Top 50 Thinkers for 2021. They described him as a political theorist.
MISR was established in 1948.
