23 February 2023

Prof. Nelius Boshoff and Dr. Similo Ngwenya, respectively an Associate Professor and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at CREST, recently travelled to Germany to attend a research project meeting at the School of Social Sciences and Technology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), from the 13th to the 17th of February 2023. The project explores geographical and epistemic inequalities in science with an empirical focus on forest research, using both bibliometrics and qualitative methods. It examines whose knowledge is recognised, on what grounds, and how social dimensions such as gender and geographical location impact scholars’ social and epistemic positions.

The project is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). It is a co-operation between TUM, CREST at Stellenbosch University, CWTS at Leiden University and the Tanzania Forestry Research Institute (TAFORI). The meeting at TUM – hosted by Dr Susanne Koch – brought all project partners together for the first time to theorise, analyse and interpret data as well as to conceptualise manuscripts to be submitted to different scientific journals for publication.