The first EUDN workshop for doctoral students: "…much more effective than a conference"!

On Friday and Saturday, 19 and 20 October 2001, the first workshop on development research, organized by the European Development Research Network (EUDN), was completed successfully. In a competitive process, 12 young researchers from Ethiopia, Germany, Ghana, Gabon, Peru, Senegal, Switzerland, the Ukraine and the United Kingdom being affiliated to European research institutes had been selected. They met for two intensive days in Bonn to present the advanced research on their doctoral thesis covering topics like labor market transitions in Peru, forest management in Madagascar, health insurance schemes in Ethiopia or micro-credit in Senegal.

A small team of senior scholars from EUDN including Sylvie Lambert from LEA-INRA, Paris; Pramila Krishnan, Cambridge University; Alexander Sarris from the University of Athens; and Clive Bell from the South Asia Institute of the Heidelberg University kindly served as tutors. They guided the doctoral students through their presentations by asking critical questions and giving constructive comments about the methodologies and approaches chosen and the results obtained.

In the open review of this program, the doctoral students expressed satisfaction with the exercise. They considered the workshop as being "… much more effective than a conference" because each of them had at least an hour to speak, and there was a lot to learn from the intense discussions on the methodologies they used and the research results they obtained. Also the tutors were happy to learn themselves about the latest research which is being conducted on development research.

While it was concluded that a workshop like that should be repeated in the future, it was also realized that a division by different disciplines is useful. The methodologies and approaches differ considerably by disciplines so that a social scientist cannot fully benefit from the discussions of economists and vice versa. Thus, it is envisaged to have two parallel workshops next year in Bonn, one for economists and one for other social scientists.

Finally, positive externalities were captured: the students and tutors had plenty of time to get to know each other during the many coffee breaks, the welcome reception at the Center for Development Research (ZEF) and the two evenings in the City of Bonn.