MIASA mentors female academics to advance their careers, take up leadership roles
The Merian Institute for Advance Studies in Africa (MIASA) on Thursday, February 16, held a public roundtable for female academics drawn from various universities and research institutes across the African continent.
The public roundtable held on the theme "Positioning and Preparing Oneself for Leadership in Academia” seeks to support early and mid-career female academics based in Africa to take their careers to the next level while embracing leadership positions.
The roundtable is part of an annual MIASA workshop on Female Academic Careers in Africa, organised in collaboration with the German Historical Institute Paris (GHIP) and the Centre for Gender Studies and Advocacy (CEGENSA), University of Ghana (UG), from February 15 to 17, 2023 on Legon campus.
Twenty early-and mid-career female academics out of 700 applicants selected from the Social Sciences and Humanities, who are from universities or research institutes across the African continent, are participating in the workshop.
Speaking to ModernGhana News on the sidelines of the roundtable, Dr. Susann Baller, MIASA Director (Germany) said her outfit has been impressed with participants after the first two days.
She indicated that at the end of the three days workshop, MIASA is hoping the women will be ready to climb higher on their career ladders.
In addition, she noted that MIASA wants participants to learn a lot from the workshop and impact other young female academics when they return to their various universities and institutions.
“In the past, we have experienced that some of the workshop participants have become Deans or heads of Departments or they have taken over leadership positions. Others have been promoted, so we really hope that those participants from this year will succeed in their careers and also create a network among each other across the continent.
“We also hope that once they go back to their universities after the three-day workshop, they can also bring it back there and support younger academics in their institutions,” Dr. Susann Baller shared.
On her part, Dr. Grace Diabah, MIASA Director (Ghana) said after holding the workshops since 2018, her outfit is confident the success will be bigger this year.
She added that the idea is for women who have progressed in their careers to come and share their experiences with young and upcoming scholars so that they can also learn from them and then progress just as they have done.
She stressed that at MIASA, they are happy that once again, the workshop has been held to have the chance to impact the careers of women across the continent.
“What we had today is just a roundabout discussion as part of the workshop. The workshop started yesterday and today we had the round table. We will continue with the coaching session. A coach will take participants through balancing work and career and life generally,” Dr. Grace Diabah told ModernGhana News.
More about the MIASA Workshop:
The workshop offers time and space to discuss the challenges and opportunities for women in academia in African contexts. Participants from Ghana, Cote d'Ivoire, Benin, Nigeria, Kenya, Zimbabwe, and South Africa are accompanied by a professional coach through different modules that address the issues of (i) how to build up efficient teams, (ii) how to deal with university hierarchies, (iii) how to address conflicts at the workplace, and (iv) how to proceed an academic career with multiple time constraints.
The workshop explores professional relationships in academic practice.
The coaching aims at assisting participants to define their own working and leadership class, but also to consider how to adapt oneself to different contexts and challenges.
The overarching purpose is to encourage early- and mid-career female academics in Ghana and other African countries to further build up their careers, to develop strategies for keeping a work-life-balance that allows for prospering in one's research and academic work, and to become ready for taking up leadership positions and/or seizing other professional opportunities.