News

African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) held a two-week summer lecture and training on research methods. The course was conducted by Professors James Robinson and Maria Angelica Bautista of the University of Chicago. This hybrid training took place from 13th June to 24th June 2022 in Nairobi. The total participants were 23, including researchers, Collaborative PhD (CPP) students and Think Tanks. The attendees learnt the critical steps required for carrying out high-quality research. The training was live-streamed through the AERC YouTube channel.

The intensive and interactive lectures provided a platform for developing some canonical approaches to empirical research in social science, illustrating them with cutting-edge research using African materials. Emphasis was placed on the importance of initially identifying a compelling question from the real world, fieldwork, qualitative studies or noticing anomalous variation in an interesting outcome. Other research areas covered during the summer master class included moving towards research hypothesis, new and exciting research areas on Africa, and exploiting the uniqueness of exciting new research on Africa and its use in understanding development challenges and potential in Africa.