Lorenzo Serravalle
DARE Project: Enhancing Resilience of Women and Girls and NGOs Amidst COVID-19 in West Africa
Program(s) of Study: Anthropology
Project Supervisor: Annie Bunting
My time as a DARE student gave me the opportunity to obtain first-hand research experience that will be valuable both for my academic career as a graduate student and for job opportunities outside of academia.
Project Description:
The year 2020 has brought fundamental changes in the way scholars conduct research and collect data. COVID-19 and the resulting governmental/individual responses (restriction of movement and contact, job losses, etc.) have limited the possibility of gaining access to information, especially in the parts of the world where Internet connection is hardly available. Following the recent reflections among the academia to study the impacts of COVID-19, this research project proposes to explore and understand the ways in which the global pandemic has changed the lives of both NGO partner researchers and humanitarian work participants in different contexts of Africa. This involves but is not limited to: understanding the importance of Internet connections and how the availability of it affects the life of individuals; exploring the importance of mobile communication through message software such as WhatsApp; analyze how methods of research have been adapted to governmental restrictions (how interviews are conducted, how surveys are undertaken, etc.), and lastly, what is the impact of the COVID-19 on humanitarian NGO work. This research will thus involve the student in one-to-one interviews with partners of the CSiW project which will be recorded and edited. The outcome of these interviews consist of a series of podcasts, in both English and French, which can be then adapted to different purposes. The foreseeable purposes of these podcasts are various, among these, the podcasts can become: teaching material at university within, but not limited to, the fields of sociolegal studies and humanities, while also constituting sensibilization material among Canadian and African partners on the issues of conjugal slavery and gender violence and how these are affected by COVID-19.The Dean’s Award for Research Excellence (DARE) – Undergraduate enables our students to meaningfully engage in research projects supervised by LA&PS faculty members. Find out more about DARE.