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About INARELS

International Network for Action Research on Education, Language and Society

INARELS is an international network for scholars and collaborators working at the intersection of education, language, and society. It exists to foster action research that matters to communities, encourage collaboration across contexts, and create a structured space where projects, publications, and carefully managed research data can be shared and discussed.

01

Who Are We?

INARELS is a research and advocacy network that facilitates culturally-responsive inquiry on education, language, and social change in Africa. It provides a platform for researchers, community leaders, policy makers, and educators to work collaboratively on projects that produce actionable information for the research community and their partners.

Our Work

Researchers in the network are generally interested in cross-cultural research that requires sustained contact with the research context, in coopting the expertise of local academic researchers, in acknowledging and respecting the expertise of non-academic community actors as custodians of critical indigenous perspectives, and negotiating the utility of the entire research process — including the findings — with research communities.

Our Network of Researchers

INARELS now has a network of over 50 affiliated researchers across 13 countries in three continents. Each country has a local coordinating team located at a major university, which helps to facilitate the interface with local communities and manage data collection, analysis, and dissemination processes. Research projects conducted under the aegis of INARELS are multi- and inter-disciplinary in nature, spanning the fields of education, languages, linguistics and sociolinguistics, history, archaeology, sociology and anthropology, political economics, philosophy, and environmental studies.

50+ Affiliated Researchers
13 Countries
3 Continents
10+ Disciplines
02

Why We Started

INARELS emerged in response to three challenges and opportunities facing researchers interested in the complex phenomena of language, education, and social change in Africa.

1

The Fieldwork Barrier

Projects that entail extensive fieldwork often require researchers to travel across countries or continents, spending extended periods immersed in research sites. In the absence of significant funding and flexible institutional commitments, researchers are compelled to abandon potentially impactful research ideas. Foreign researchers with significant funding often rely on their local counterparts for the arduous data-collection tasks. By highlighting the disciplinary expertise and cultural rootedness of local research experts, INARELS facilitates equal collaboration that targets rigor, efficiency, and maximal impact.

2

Research Utility and Community Voice

When research is driven primarily by researchers' own scholarly needs, considerations about the practical utility of research findings — especially to the participants and their communities — are often marginalized. INARELS recognizes the cultural and indigenous methodological expertise of research participants and their communities, and commits to negotiating with them the entire research process. By building communities of "experts" with individuals who bring unique perspectives and skills to bear on the issues, each research team sharpens the methodological rigor and practical utility of their research enterprise.

3

The Continuity of Social Inquiry

Social realities are by nature dynamic; the issues we study continue to evolve after a research project ends, thus limiting the capacity of researchers to understand fluid trends and shifting interlinkings of variables. The networks INARELS bolsters community partners' ability to continue documenting relevant events in their day-to-day life, thereby providing rich data sources from which future inquiries can benefit immensely. Such community engagement also has major payoff in a community's capacity for evidence-based, culturally-responsive decision making long after any research project.

03

Network as Research Model

The INARELS model of collaborative action research addresses a common challenge confronted by African scholars and their counterparts across the continent and in the Diaspora who share similar scholarly and social interests but are constrained in their capacity for meaningful partnership by physical distance and limited resources.

Africa has enormous scholarly expertise that could inspire and sustain research cross-continent collaboration on specific fields of common interest among scholars spread across countries. Yet popular ideas and programs for research collaboration uphold narratives about bringing Western scholarly expertise to support a perceived lack of scholarly expertise in Africa. INARELS as a model strategically re-equips this narrative to ensure balanced oversight and shared responsibility for initiating and pursuing research programs that are of mutual interest to all partners.

Crucial to the INARELS model:

  • a Scholarly expertise is coextensive with and layered upon cultural literacy.
  • b The proximity of researchers to the research site is essential for productive inquiry.
  • c Academic scholarship has social impact whether intended or not.

African researchers are uniquely positioned to bring their scholarly expertise, cultural knowledge, and proximity to research sites to retool collaborative action research inquiries to more effectively harvest the social benefits of research outcomes. Indeed, research processes that are not integrative of and directed at contributing to constructive exercise of agency by the researched is characteristically exploitative either by design or outcome. By providing a platform for researchers to contribute their unique expertise and access to disparate research sites to action research projects, INARELS fosters informed agent-oriented localized decision making that defines social change.

04

Mission & Values

INARELS seeks to elevate the quest for excellence in African societies through rigorous inquiry that respects, through the varied expertise of local actors, the autochthonous cultural values and institutions of Africa.

Through INARELS, researchers, community actors, public sector agents, and private sector partners will work collaboratively to investigate critical issues of mutual interest that will provide actionable information for individuals and communities affected by the research process.

INARELS is founded on the idea that constructive social change results from intellectually honest, rigorous, and culturally responsive actions. It is built on key principles of collaborative action research. Our researchers sustain several lines of research programs simultaneously under independent teams of collaborators — research that spans educational issues relating to language, culture, politics, economics, history, and the environment.

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Action Research

Research that is oriented toward constructive change, not just documentation.

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Collaboration

Balanced partnership across institutions, countries, and disciplines.

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Cultural Responsiveness

Centering indigenous expertise and the lived realities of research communities.

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Accessibility

Making research findings available to the communities they concern.

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Community Impact

Measuring success by the practical benefit to research participants and their communities.

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Responsible Knowledge Sharing

Ethical, permission-aware data dissemination tied to project context and researcher consent.

05

Leadership Team

DO
Network Coordinator

Desmond Ikenna Odugu, Ph.D.

Lake Forest College — Illinois, USA

Associate Professor of Education and Chair of the Department of Education at Lake Forest College. He received his PhD in Cultural and Educational Policy Studies, with focus in Comparative and International Education, from Loyola University Chicago. His intellectual background spans Philosophy, Educational Psychology, history, political economics, and mass communication.

He conducts research on language processes in multilingual societies, the historiography of Western education in West African contexts, and the relationships among education, history, culture, language, and social change. Dr. Odugu has extensive field research experiences in India, Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

Language Policy Comparative Education Historical Literacies Civic Engagement
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IO
Network Secretary

Dr. Ifeoma Obuasi

Michael Okpara University of Agriculture — Nigeria

Lecturer with the College of General and Communication Studies. Holds a PhD in Sociolinguistics/Discourse Studies from Ebonyi State University. An advocate for indigenous language-based multilingual education with notable curriculum development experience.

Sociolinguistics Discourse Studies Igbo Language
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JZ
Regional Network Facilitator

James Zotto, Ph.D.

University of Dar es Salaam — Tanzania

Assistant Lecturer of History at the University of Dar es Salaam. 2014 recipient of the American Council of Learned Societies' African Humanities Program Dissertation Fellowship. Research interests focus on the history of border disputes in Africa.

African History Border Studies East Africa
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Regional Teams

Each region has a coordinating team based at a major university, facilitating local community partnerships, data collection, and knowledge dissemination.

East Africa

Southern Africa

West Africa

Join the INARELS Network

Whether you are an established scholar, an emerging researcher, or a community partner whose work connects to education, language, or society — INARELS welcomes collaborative applications.

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