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.
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.
INARELS now has a netowrks 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. Reserch 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.
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 is the understanding that (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, and (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.
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.