Pacific Research Colloquium 2016
Pacific Research Colloquium 2016
25 January - 5 February 2016
The Pacific Research Colloquium (PRC) is one of the most significant activities that the SSGM program organises each year. It is part of SSGM’s broader commitment to building social science research skills in the Pacific, including Papua and Timor-Leste.
The PRC brings early career social science researchers from the Pacific (including Papua and Timor-Leste) to a 2 week intensive workshop in Canberra, Australia, to work with experienced researchers in developing skills for social science research in the special context of the Pacific.
The 2016 PRC will be held at The ANU from Monday 25th January to Friday 5 February. The 20 fully funded participants from the region will include: 4 from Fiji; 1 from New Caledonia; 4 from Papua; 3 from Papua New Guinea; 1 from Samoa; 3 from Solomon Islands; and 2 from Vanuatu.
The 2 week PRC program will include intensive and interactive training on designing, planning, conducting, and writing reports on, research projects. Part of the focus is on developing the research writing and presentation skills of participants. This includes scholars from SSGM and other parts of the ANU and other universities providing mentoring to participants in advance of the PRC, as you develop their research projects, and during the PRC.
There have been two big developments with the PRC in 2015. The first is that for the first time, the PRC has been recognised as an accredited course by the ANU. Initially this will only be as a course that SSGM post-graduate students must take as part of their preparation for their research work. In due course, however, we propose to make this approach to training in research methodology for the Pacific a part of broader teaching programs.
The second major development in 2015 is that for the first time a two week program based on the PRC approach was presented in Port Moresby, PNG to twenty five staff of the PNG Constitutional and Law Reform Commission (CLRC). This was our first experience of presenting an intensive social science research methodology training program to a group of practitioners, without much background in this kind of research. The SSGM facilitators learned a great deal from developing and presenting this training. We expect to present a similar course for PNG CLRC staff, and staff of other PNG government institutions on an annual basis over the next few years.
