Dr. Araba Sey selected as Mellon Senior Scholar in Residence

Dr. Araba Sey selected as Mellon Senior Scholar in Residence

Dr. Araba Sey, Research Assistant Professor at the University of Washington Information School and TASCHA, was selected as a Mellon Senior Scholar in Residence at Rhodes University in Grahamstown, South Africa. Araba is spending three months working with faculty, researchers, and students at the university’s Africa Media Matrix School of Journalism and Media Studies.

From January to April 2016, Araba is working with two of the school’s research groups: the Pedagogy of Place (PoP) group led by Rod Amner and the Dwesa research group led by Dr. Lorenzo Dalvit. Her work largely involves advising Masters and Ph.D. students on their research projects on a variety of topics, from participatory media production processes and cultivating digital citizenship in the PoP group to mobile phone-related research in the Dwesa group.

Additionally, Araba brings her extensive research experience to the PoP group, contributing to the design of a qualitative study of the participatory local media ecology in Makana.

Araba is also participating in various workshops and training programs with the researchers, students, and communities. Some of the topics of the workshops and training programs include using mobile phones to make videos out in the Dwesa community and working groups that discuss community wi-fi deployment strategies.

Araba hopes that her time there will help support the work and capacity of the researchers and students she is working with, resulting in high-quality research that can be published in international journals and shared with the international research community.