Time: Friday 8 June 2007 at 10.15-13.00
Place: Room 5.402 Teorifagbygget, House 5, University of Tromsø


NUFU Collaborative partners from the University of Botswana will visit Tromsø next week and SEMUT in collaboration with the Centre for Sami Studies and the Department of Social Anthropology invite to a seminar on Friday June 8th, in House 5, room 5.402, 10.15-13.00.

Title: Academy meets Advocacy. University cooperation as an instrument for indigenous development.


Programme

10.15	Introduction by Maitseo Bolaane, University of Botswana coordinator, Molefe Rantsudu, NUFU programme administrator and Sidsel Saugestad, University of Tromsø coordinator
11.00 (approx)	Discussion
12.00	Lunch
12.30	Culture for Sale. A film made by VKS student Dithynia Lekoa (lasts about 30 minutes)

The NUFU collaborative programme for San (Basarwa) Research and Capacity Building started in 1996, and is now moving towards its completion. When it started up the programme drew heavily on experiences from the University of Tromso and its Centre for Sami Studies in an attempt to reach the San indigenous minority of Botswana/Southern Africa though research projects, scholarships and San Capacity building. In a paper that will be presented at a NUFU dissemination seminar in Bergen before the visit to Tromsø the following points are highlighted:

• A dominating feature of Univ.Botswana-Univ.Tromso research at the end of the NUFU funding period is the blurring between researchers and the researched as more San people engage in research as researchers.
  
  
• The paper will therefore assess the extent to which the programme has addressed and sought to overcome challenges of dealing with the third party - the San people - who are both objects of studies and subjects in a process seeking their incorporation in the academic community as students and gradually as lecturers and professors.
  
  
• It adds to the challenges in the programme that the recognition of indigeneity is contested in Botswana, and in the region. Unlike programmes working for clean water or better nutrition the very justification of the Univ.Botswana-Univ.Tromso programme is continually questioned, and it is a part of its activities to engage in discourses on its academic as well as its moral platform.