Conducting Research and Mentoring Students in Africa

Forthcoming ...

This handbook presents a selection of qualitative, quantitative, emergent and comparative research methods, many of which are African-centered. Furthermore, it discusses epistemological paradigms in the social research, mentoring techniques, publishing strategies, Internet research techniques, and research integrity and ethics. The book is designed primarily to provide researchers with an understanding of some research approaches that are useful for researching Africa. By asking fundamental questions about how to rethink methods, this book is also a critical contribution for thinking through knowledge decolonisation. The suggestions made about the possibility of studying Africa systematically are therefore subject to close examination. What integrates the chapters in this book can seem somewhat ordinary. But many research and mentoring insights are so discernible, so essential, that they are arduous to master, and convey with originality and clarity. The inventiveness of this book therefore hinges upon the simplicity with which conventional but distinct facts about the approaches examined are assembled into a coherent and intellectually persuasive synthesis.