Colonialism shaped modern universities in Africa – how they can become truly African

Colonialism profoundly shaped modern universities in Africa. It implanted institutions on African soil that were largely replicas of European universities rather than organically African.

For historian and political theorist Achille Mbembe, one problem of universities in Africa “is that they are ‘Westernised”. He describes them as “local institutions of a dominant academic model based on a Eurocentric epistemic canon that attributes truth only to the Western way of knowledge production”. This model, he says, “disregards other epistemic traditions”. Read more by clicking here!

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NEA – Sampling and Data presentation

No doubt you have by now spent considerable time considering the different methods you will use to collect data. This is valuable and important as methods are the salient factor in determining the accuracy of the data and subsequent conclusion therefore weaknesses in the methods reduce the certainty of the conclusions. The blog post here looks at some techniques you may wish to use to present your data amongst other important pieces of information. There are also further pieces of information to be found below: Barcelona Field Studies Centre Field studies council General data presentation

Carbon catch-22 : the pollution in our soil Bad behaviour doesn’t usually have good consequences but our fossil fuel and fertiliser habits may have had some “good” environmental side-effects. Our new research suggests that the last 200 years of pollution have increased the carbon stored in soils across natural ecosystems in Britain. And this locking in of carbon in soils provides an offset for some of our carbon emissions. But the catch-22 is if we kick our polluting habits, this carbon is at risk of returning to our atmosphere, contributing to climate change. Read the rest of the article here!

Alaska’s top-heavy glaciers are approaching an irreversible tipping point

The melting of one of North America’s largest icefields has accelerated and could soon reach an irreversible tipping point. That’s the conclusion of new research colleagues and I have published on the Juneau Icefield, which straddles the Alaska-Canada border near the Alaskan capital of Juneau. In the summer of 2022, I skied across the flat, smooth and white plateau of the icefield, accompanied by other researchers , sliding in the tracks of the person in front of me under a hot sun. From that plateau, around 40 huge, interconnected glaciers descend towards the sea, with hundreds of smaller glaciers on the mountain peaks all around. Read the full article here!

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