Civic engagement

While the BIEA’s primary role is to conduct and facilitate postdoctoral research across Eastern Africa, we recognize the potential of local initiatives and citizen researchers to transform knowledge production.

This understanding underpins our civic engagement programme: we aim to build relationships outside of the academy, contributing to raising aspirations among young people and marginalised groups, and making research materials accessible at community level, where resources permit.

We have supported undergraduates to explore careers in research; partnered with environmental activists and citizen researchers in an informal settlement; and contributed to community archives and library projects in Nairobi.

BIEA has collaborated with the Ukombozi Library and Dr Njuki Githethwa on their Mashujaa Heritage Archives and Library project in Nairobi.

This initiative aims to catalogue, classify and preserve documentary records related to peoples’ struggles for land, labour and freedoms dating back to the 1990s in Kenya and to make them accessible to researchers and community members. The partnership has also created opportunities for young researchers on BIEA’s Undergraduate Volunteer Programme or Graduate Attachment Programme to contribute to the development of the archive and to deepen their understanding of these histories.

BIEA has partnered with Mto Wangu Initiative, a community-led organization dedicated to combating the challenges of climate change and environmental degradation while restoring livelihoods in Nairobi’s Mathare slums.

Through our support, Mto Wangu conducted citizen-led research, including community dialogues on the impacts of flooding. BIEA has also donated books and equipment to Mto Wangu’s community library and, together with students on our graduate attachment programme, planted trees in the Mathare community park as part of the initiative’s river restoration project.