A visit to Bangkok
Valuing Voices is an equitable research partnerships tool that was developed jointly by Mahidol University and the University of York with funding from the Wellcome Trust. In early December, PARC Manager Susan Jim was at the “Valuing Voices for Equitable and Responsible Research Workshop” from 3-4 December, to look at how this tool resonates with the Africa Charter.
This is part of our broader work mapping and analysing existing equitable partnerships frameworks, to clarify where the Africa Charter fits into this long history of intellectual inquiry.
As well as speaking on a panel and presenting on the Africa Charter, Susie was keen to understand South East Asian perspectives on equitability in research partnerships. In fact, one of the most interesting aspects of the workshop was the strongly emerging identity of the global East. Valuing Voices deals specifically with global North – global East relationships, whereas the Africa Charter relates more to the global South.
One similarity between the Valuing Voices tool and the Africa Charter… is that both projects have identified 10 principles of equitable and responsible research.
One difference between the Valuing Voices tool and the Africa Charter… is that the Valuing Voices tool is primarily concerned with helping researchers to make a change at the level of their own research partnerships, while the Charter is more oriented towards making overarching systems-level change.
The Valuing Voices tool is primarily aimed at individual researchers, guiding reflection on what research is being done, who is doing the research and how the research is being performed and shared. The Africa Charter is more concerned with policy change at the level of institutions, funders and publishers. It is interesting to look at how both could be used harmoniously. The Charter, for instance, is firmly embedded into the WUN, and was discussed at the WUN Global Africa Group co-chaired by Isabella Aboderin of PARC and Divine Fuh of HUMA. There is potential for both the Charter and Valuing Voices tool to be adapted and adopted across the WUN.
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