From Academic Comfort Zone to Meaningful Research

Prof Audrey Gadzekpo credits PASGR for its leadership in making university staff realise that their mission goes beyond teaching to making a return on investment to the taxpayer.

While teaching may be academics’ primary calling, the University of Ghana professor and Dean at the School of Communication Studies, who has had a relationship with PASGR since March 2013, believes in doing ‘meaningful research’. This means ensuring that those who ought to know about specific research do so. Knowing that research can be used in meaningful ways to improve the lot of everybody is as important as teaching.“Sometimes we forget; we haven‘t always been good at recognizing that.”

The University of Ghana is a PASGR partner university. Gadzekpo was part of the team that worked on strengthening the MRPP curriculum, specifically the Research Policy and Public Interface component. She was also involved in the design of the Policy Engaged Research module offered by our Professional Development and Training programme.

Gadzekpo has used PASGR training to give short courses to colleagues and academics. “The unique thing about the course is that it seeks to train us, academics, on what to do during and after we’ve done the research…from engaging policy actors during the study to writing an opinion piece for a newspaper.