Conversations with Baganda Muslims About their Experiences and Memories of the Colonial Period
by Brenda McCollum
In April 2024 I was awarded the BIEA’s Bringing the Research Home Grant. This grant allowed me to undertake a research dissemination trip to Uganda in June 2024. In my trip to Uganda I arranged and attended five research dissemination events. The first event was hosted between the Kibuli Mosque and the Islamic University in Uganda. The current leader of the Kibuli Mosque and the Kibuli community, Prince Kassim Nakibinge, graciously organized this event and welcomed myself at the Kibuli Mosque. This event began with a thirty minute conversation between myself, Prince Kassim, and several educational leaders within the Kibuli community.
Next, I presented my research at the Islamic University. This was followed by a lively question and answer session, in which I was grateful to receive a wide variety of questions and comments on my research. Prince Kassim and the Kibuli community were incredibly supportive of my doctoral research when I visited Uganda in 2021 and they helped me organize many of the oral history interviews which I conducted. I was incredibly grateful to be able to bring this project back to Kibuli and to hear the community’s comments and questions about the research.
My second event was organized and hosted in a small rural community to the west of Masaka. When I travelled to Uganda in 2021 for my doctoral research, I visited this community to conduct oral history interviews. It was a pleasure to visit this community again and to present my research to them. For this event, I was hosted by and presented my research at the local mosque. Although this is a small community, there were around thirty attendees at the event. Due to the varied range of English language knowledge in this area, I worked with my research assistant to present the work in both English and Luganda. This presentation was followed by a vibrant question and answer session. I was grateful to hear this community’s questions and feedback on my doctoral research.
The third event in this trip was hosted by a rural community in Mukono, to the east of Kampala. This event was also held in the local mosque and the presentation was also given in both English and Luganda. Similar to the second event, I had also visited this community in 2021 when I was conducting my doctoral research and I also conducted oral history interviews with elderly members of this community. It was lovely to visit this community again and I was grateful for their hospitality and their comments on my doctoral research.
The penultimate event in my research dissemination trip was hosted by Makerere University in Kampala. In my doctoral research trips to Uganda, I was required to receive ethical approval from a Ugandan institution and the Makerere Institute of Social Research undertook an ethical evaluation of my project. At Makerere I presented my doctoral research, followed by a discussion session. I appreciated the questions and comments I received on my work at Makerere and I was grateful to interact with other academics who also study Uganda. Term time had come to an end at Makerere by the time of my event there, but the university was still able to generate an audience of around twenty people. I am thankful to Makerere for their hospitality and for the opportunity to discuss my work with students and academic faculty at the university.
The final event in my trip was hosted at the Uganda Society in Kampala. The Uganda Society acted as a base for me while I was in Uganda conducting research in 2021 and 2022. I was very grateful to be able to return to the Uganda Society during this trip and to share my doctoral research with other Uganda Society members. This event had over thirty individuals in attendance and I appreciated the feedback and questions that I received. The dynamic discussions and hospitality I experienced at the Uganda Society were a highlight of this trip.
I am grateful to the BIEA for funding this trip and for giving me the opportunity to discuss the findings of my doctoral research with the communities that made this research possible. This research dissemination trip allowed me to reconnect with communities and individuals that I had not seen since 2021 and enabled me to form new connections with other people in my field of study. Moreover, this time spent in Uganda and with these communities allowed me to formulate further ideas for future research projects. Traveling to Uganda for these research dissemination events was a high point of my academic year!
