About PARC
PARC represents the University of Bristol’s cross-disciplinary commitment to championing transformation in research collaborations with Africa. Established in January 2020, the Perivoli Africa Research Centre (PARC) is funded by a generous gift from the Perivoli Foundation.
What makes PARC unique?
We have the most ambitious agenda of any Africa research centre: to help advance a transformation of the global research ecosystem so African scholarship takes its rightful place, contributing to knowledge creation for the benefit of all.
We are doing this through:
Co-creating the Africa Charter for Transformative Research Collaborations with Africa’s major higher education bodies
Generating new Africa-led research that models transformative principles
Working with our core partners in Africa and using our strong global networks to embed charter principles in policy and practice across the HE landscape
Having, at the University of Bristol, a community of researchers dedicated to transforming research culture, with full support from University leaders
Mobilising capacity in transformative partnership working with Africa through teaching and training
Our mission
PARC’s core mission is to help advance a rebalancing of the global science and research ecosystem to ensure that African scholars, institutions and knowledges from the continent take their rightful place in the global scientific effort.
To do so, PARC works to envision, model and champion a transformative mode of global North-Africa research collaborations that redresses the multi-layered power imbalances in scientific knowledge production, which persist as legacies of colonialism and disadvantage the continent as well as constrain global scholarship.
In this effort, we reflect the University of Bristol’s wider culture of alternative thinking, activism, and commitment to social justice.
What does success look like?
A transformative mode of research collaborations embraced and pursued as standard and best practice by scholarly communities, higher education institutions and science funding and governance bodies in the global North, Africa and beyond.