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Opening session
Mar. 25
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Building on PolyCIVIS Insights: Enhancing African-European Cooperation in Research and Evidence-Based Policy
Mar. 25
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Overcoming racism in healthcare: a European and African perspective on how to improve medical training
Mar. 25
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Challenging the complexities of informal elderly care
Mar. 25
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Rethinking Aging: Scientific Evidence, Public Perception, and Cultural Practices
Mar. 25
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Polycrisis and forced displacement across Africa and Europe
Mar. 25
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A cross-continental endeavor towards gender equality
Mar. 25
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Experimentation and the making of experiential knowledge
Mar. 25
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Transregional sustainable development
Mar. 25
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Transcultural memories and narratives
Mar. 25
| Dr. Balliah
Dinashree, University of
Witwatersrand,
Johannesbourg (South Africa) Pr. Duncan Jane, University of Glasgow, Glasgow (Scotland) Pr. Wessels Brigitte, University of Glasgow, Glasgow (Scotland) Reflections on an African/ European research and journalism-led teaching collaboration on equitable and just digital societies This proposal is for a joint tandem talk to be provided by three members of the CIVIS micro programme, Equitable and Just digital society: developing interdisciplinary skills and knowledge. The talk will focus on the experiences of delivering research and journalism-led teaching as part of a new CIVIS micro-programme, focussed on empowering students to develop critical knowledge and practical skills to become interactional experts in research for an equitable and just digital society. The micro-programme was co-taught for the first time in the 2024/5 academic year by leading experts from various European and one African University (Wits University). The micro-programme included workshops on power and justice in the digital age from an international perspective. These examined how digital technologies are being used in the exercise of state and private power internationally, the relationships between digital surveillance and social inequalities, and the role of public agency, including journalistic agency, in ensuring accountability. They also focussed on strategies for students to become interactional experts on issues relating to surveillance, data privacy and social justice journalism, and looked at ways in which research projects can be designed to maximise potential for knowledge exchange and impact. The workshops also provided a research team being hosted by the University of Glasgow, on public oversight of digital surveillance for intelligence purposes in southern Africa, with an opportunity to integrate research findings into the teaching. Researchers from Angola and Zimbabwe presented on challenges relating to public oversight of digital surveillance in both countries. The workshops provided opportunities for the researchers and students to think together about how to shape more just and equitable digital societies in countries still weighed down by authoritarian legacies, while facing new forms of digital inequality and authoritarianism. This presentation will reflect on the experiences of this European/ African collaboration in the micro-programme.
Equitable partnership is critical for funders and partners seeking fairer ways of working, with its importance reflected in the high volume of guidance produced by various stakeholders. Most of this guidance tends to be framed around principles of best practice while omitting day-to-day practical elements as well as the trickier question of whose practice is best. Practical barriers to equitable international partnership manifest in many ways, from financial processes, funder regulations, and legal differences to differences in institutional capacity that range from research support to infrastructure. While some barriers are structural and are not within the power of institutions to change, there are many opportunities for institutions to enhance equity in international collaboration and therefore mitigate against some of the structural issues. Through enhanced understanding of the practical barriers to equitable partnership and working collaboratively to identify contextually relevant solutions, institutions can ensure their partnerships are more equitable and resilient. This presentation will draw on two decades of learning, unlearning and relearning between the University of Glasgow in Scotland and Ifakara Health Institute in Tanzania. The session will highlight how these institutions have worked together to address the messy practicalities of equitable partnership, leading to enhanced connectivity. Attendees will gain insights into how to operationalize equity, particularly in Global South-Global North collaborations and hear about the mutual benefits for institutions that navigate challenges of equitable partnership together. Pr. Charfi Ikbek, University of Sfax, Sfax (Tunisia) Pr. Kammoun Sonda, University of Sfax, Sfax (Tunisia) Inclusive approach to instructional design for sustainable development: The Case of Federated Projects at ISAMS-USF In the evolving landscape of higher education, innovation increasingly relies on emerging strategies, methods, and tools that are centered on pedagogical design rooted in an inclusive and open approach (Potvin, M. 2014). This involves all stakeholders, engaging the instructor, the student, the socioeconomic partner, and sometimes an international partner in the same educational project, in order to achieve better scientific outreach and equity in educational opportunities. This approach fosters inclusive education and opens up opportunities for students with limited resources by providing them access to information and advanced technology (David Alis, 2005)... while maintaining openness to local and global contexts. In this context, most federated projects at the Sfax University, particularly those involving ISAMS, are committed to including students in a project-based learning system focused on professional integration, by fostering linkages with the socioeconomic world (P. Cordazzo, 2013) on the one hand and international partnerships on the other (Hsin-I Lee · 2025). Sustainability in higher education (A. Barthes, 2025) refers precisely to this dual integration of technology transfers into curricula and to mobilizing holistic actions from the classroom level. In this scientific contribution, the aim is not only to share an experience of open pedagogical design adopted in projects such as MUSAE, EPE, and PALETT-A, but also to address the major issue of student competency development. The internationalization of higher education hinges precisely on the following questions: To what extent can we meet the demands of an exponentially growing market and establish an international position? How can we bridge the gap between the rudimentary knowledge offered by the university system and the technological apex that pervades today's world? Can international projects facilitate mediation between graduates and their professional integration environment, and if so, how? Such open questions can deepen research at the intersection of technology and education.
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Africa Charter for Transformative
Research Collaboration
Research and education forum on joint solutions for common challenges
The 1st African-European CIVIS Forum for Research and Education strives to leverage on the growing role of universities as proactive agents for global solidarity, sustainability, and inclusive development, as well as engines of transformation and joint knowledge production. We showcase African-European cutting-edge research addressing key societal challenges, encourage and co-develop new project ideas and educational offers, and engage with societal stakeholders across Africa and Europe in co-creating impactful solutions. In mutual trust, CIVIS universities across both continents reaffirm their shared responsibility.
The Forum unites interdisciplinary and transcontinental perspectives in a stimulating exchange via mixed panel discussions, tandem talks, and interactive poster pitches. Contributions address the added value of research collaboration with civil organisations and other non-academic actors, ways to build a decolonised African/European academic partnership, strategies to deal with the polycrisis in a complex world, ways to preserve our heritage of the future and pathways towards transregional sustainable development. Further topics include transcultural narratives and migrant storytelling, fostering participatory action research in vulnerable context, building transnationality through Open Labs, sharing joint African / European viewpoints on epidemiology, cultivating language beyond learning, and other more …!
Africa Charter for Transformative Research Collaboration
The Africa Charter for Transformative Research Collaborations, co-initiated by the African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA), articulates twelve principles and six aspirations for policy change, pushing the transformative ambition of research, redefining global research partnership, and re-balancing the global academic system. Building on the presence of the CIVIS Research Council, the Forum wants to find answers to the question, how our alliance can further contribute to progressive change in the spirit of the Charter and what implications the Charter has for research collaboration and intercontinental knowledge co-creation in CIVIS.
Hassan II University of Casablanca
Hassan II University of Casablanca (UH2C) is a major public research university located in Morocco’s economic capital. The academic foundations of the institution date back to 1975, while its current institutional configuration is the outcome of a strategic merger with Hassan II University of Mohammadia in 2014. UH2C comprises of 18 institutions divided between six campuses across Casablanca and Mohammedia, The university hosts a community of approximately 143,000 students who are enrolled in a variety of Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Doctoral programmes representing a wide spectrum of disciplines within exact sciences, technology, health sciences, arts, humanities, law, economics, and management. The languages of instruction are primarily Arabic and French, with a strong multilingual orientation.
UH2C is supported by a dynamic research and innovation ecosystem structured around 99 laboratories and 10 Thematic Centers of Research and Innovation, providing a solid foundation for interdisciplinary and transnational collaboration. The university has developed a strong international visibility through more than hundreds of cooperation agreements worldwide and sustained participation in major EU-funded programmes, including Erasmus+, Horizon 2020, and FP7.
Within this framework, UH2C plays a central enabling role in the organization and hosting of the 1st African-European CIVIS Forum for Research and Education in Casablanca. As an associate member of the CIVIS Alliance, the university contributes actively to the Forum’s scientific coordination, institutional dialogue, and logistical organization, fostering inclusive spaces for co-creation and joint agenda-setting between African and European partners. Reflecting its commitment to equitable and balanced intercontinental cooperation, UH2C ensures concrete support for participation by covering accommodation and on-site hospitality for partner institutions from Africa, thereby facilitating meaningful engagement and long-term collaboration. Through this leadership, UH2C reinforces the CIVIS ambition to transform shared challenges into joint solutions and to anchor African-European academic partnerships in mutual trust, reciprocity, and sustainable impact.
Find out more about UH2C at: www.univh2c.ma
About Casablanca
Welcome to Casablanca (or ‘Casa’, because you will hear that more often than the full name)!
Located on the Atlantic coast of northwestern Africa, Casablanca is an African city whose development has been shaped by sustained historical, cultural, and institutional influences from Europe. This dual character, African in context and experience, yet marked by European encounters, creates a shared and accessible space for participants coming from both African and European countries.
Casablanca, known over time as Anfa, Casa Branca, and Casablanca, is the largest city in the Kingdom of Morocco and a place shaped by many layers of history. From its Berber and Phoenician origins, through Portuguese, Spanish, and French influences, the city has continuously reinvented itself, gradually emerging as Morocco’s main economic centre and one of its most cosmopolitan urban spaces. Over the years, Casablanca has drawn academics, professionals, entrepreneurs, and artists, establishing itself as the country’s main gateway to global trade, finance, and higher education. This long process of transformation is visible in the city’s diverse population and distinctive urban landscape, where traditional Moroccan forms coexist naturally with Art Deco, modernist, and contemporary architecture. Moving through Casablanca, one senses clear shifts in atmosphere from one area to another. From the monumental presence of Hassan II Mosque overlooking the Atlantic, to the dense streets of the Old Medina of Casablanca, and the calm, orderly alleys of the Habous Quarter, where craftsmanship and neo-traditional design meet. Casablanca has also occupied a lasting place in the global imagination through cinema, its name becoming legendary with the 1942 film Casablanca, while locally, its historic movie theatres reflect a deep and enduring relationship with film culture. Casa is a city that welcomes ambition and constant movement, it draws people in, and over time, invites them to find their own place in a city shaped as much by those who pass through it as by those who chose to stay.
Places to visit in Casablanca:
Hassan II Mosque: One of the largest mosques in the world, dramatically located on the Atlantic Ocean and a major architectural landmark.
Old Medina of Casablanca: A dense historic quarter offering a glimpse into the city’s older urban fabric, markets, and everyday life.
Habous Quarter: Also known as the New Medina, combining traditional Moroccan architecture with 20th-century urban planning.
Villa des Arts: A contemporary art space hosting exhibitions, talks, and cultural events.
Ain Diab Corniche: A lively seaside promenade with beaches, cafés, and restaurants, popular both day and evening.
For more information about Casablanca, please visit the official city website at https://www.casablancacity.ma/fr
For those who wish to see more of Morocco during their stay, several cities are easily accessible from Casa by train:
Visit to Rabat: Approximately 1 to 1.5 hours by train. Morocco’s capital city, known for its administrative institutions, historic sites, and coastal setting.
Visit to Marrakech: Approximately 2.5 to 3 hours by train. A major cultural destination, famous for its historic medina, architecture, and vibrant public spaces.
Visit to Fes: Approximately 4 to 4.5 hours by train. Renowned for its medieval medina and long-standing role as a centre of learning and scholarship.
Location
MOHAMED SEKKAT UNIVERSITY LIBRARY
Located in the heart of the university campus on the El Jadida road, the Mohamed Sekkat University Library (BUMS) is a centre of excellence dedicated to study, research, and innovation. Designed to provide a comfortable and stimulating environment, BUMS caters to the diverse needs of students, faculty, and researchers.
Map Link: https://maps.app.goo.gl/Z32mrZ15SgmNjRAR6
The most convenient way to get there is by taking a red petit taxi (Small taxis are colour coded by city: red in Casablanca, blue in Rabat, beige in Marrakech…)
Please make sure the meter is turned on, as this is the fare you should pay. Alternatively, you may use the inDrive app.
There is no tram stop directly next to the library; however, the tram can bring you close to the area, with the final part of the journey completed by taxi or on foot.
Tramway website: https://www.casatramway.ma/8 MAD/ticket. Check the website for maps and routes.